Consensus denialism

Oh my, things are really heating up in anticipation of the final release of the IPCC WG1 Summary for Policy Makers.

In a recent post Who is on which ‘side’ in the climate debate, anyways?, I argued that it is getting very difficult to tell who is on which side of the climate debate: virtually all academic climate scientists are within the 97% consensus regarding the infrared emission of the carbon dioxide molecule and the warming effect on the planet. Further, virtually all agree that the planet has been warming, and that humans have had some impact on the climate.

So, exactly what differentiates the two sides in the debate? I think Dana Nuccitelli (for once) hits the nail on the head: consensus denial. Exactly what is consensus denial? Here are some characteristics of the social aspects of consensus denial:

Denial that experts selected by an organization (i.e. the IPCC) with substantial infiltration by ‘big green’ are objective arbiters of climate science.

Denial of the trustworthiness of the experts owing to the behaviors revealed by the Climategate emails and the explicit policy advocacy by IPCC participants, most particularly by those in leadership positions in the IPCC

Denial that a scientific consensus seeking process makes sense for an exceedingly complex problem like climate change that is dominated by uncertainties.

Concern that an explicit scientific consensus building process in a politicized environment is introducing biases into the science and amplifying them.

Concern over how the community of climate scientists allowed intolerant activists who make false claims to certainty to become the public face of the field – Roger Pielke Jr

[Concern that] what is commonly called the “mainstream” view of climate science is contained in the spread of results from computer models. What is commonly dismissed as the “skeptical” or “denier” view coincides with the real-world observations. – Ross McKitrick

The idea of producing a colossal document of near biblical infallibility is a misrepresentation of how science works, and we need to look very carefully about what the IPCC does in the future. – Myles Allen

The “truth” about global warming, if it exists, lives somewhere in a constantly shifting probability cloud. – Indian Express

Concern that policies based on consensus science that are advocated to mitigate global warming are technologically, economically and politically infeasible.

Concern that policies based on consensus science that are advocated to mitigate global warming, even if implemented, would be ineffective in controlling climate and extreme weather events

Ross McKitrick sums up the IPCC ‘consensus’ science in this way:

As the model-versus-reality discrepancy plays out, the last place you will learn about it will be in IPCC reports.

So who’s denying science? It doesn’t seem to be the ‘consensus deniers.’

Get rid of the non-condensing CO2 GHG and the earth would be much closer to 255K than the current 288K. That is what the control knob [1] is all about. No one has an alternate theory (at least that is not considered krank). And the amount of uncertainty in this outcome is small.

Webby, oh Webby. You notice I did not say CO2 is not important, it just says it is not dominant. You are wrong, Lacis is wrong, and the IPCC are wrong. Jig is up Webby ole boy. Take some time to reflect on your motivations. If that fails, there is the hope of medication.

“Radiative forcing experiments assuming doubled CO2 and a 2% increase in solar irradiance (5) show that water vapor provides the strongest climate feedback of any of the atmospheric GHGs,
but that it is not the cause (forcing) of global climate change. The response of the climate system to an applied forcing is determined to be the sum of the direct (no-feedback) response to the applied
forcing and the induced radiative response that is attributable to the feedback process contributions. The ratio of the total climate response to the no-feedback response is commonly known as the feedback factor, which incorporates all the complexities of the climate system feedback interactions. For the doubled CO2 and the 2% solar irradiance forcings, for which the direct no-feedback responses of the global surface temperature are 1.2° and 1.3°C, respectively, the ~4°C surface
warming implies respective feedback factors of and 3.0 (5).”

(5) J. Hansen et al., AGU Geophys. Monogr. 29, 130 (1984).

As I read it: 4.0 / 1.3 about = 3.0. And I’ve had questions about this being a central tenant? In that it assumes it’s the CO2. But I may be miss-understanding what they said. I am not denying it so much as saying, this is it? I expected more.

Of course I can, and did. The paper discusses CO2 as both the long term and short term control knob. When I said reframing, I wasn’t referring to Lacis or his paper, but to your comment.

The reframing is not to the underlying climate modeled results, but to the political PR. Including yours. “Control knob” has been used by you warmists as an easy to understand argument in favor of your delusional policy preferences. Just like the original PR use of “heat in the pipeline.”

“And I’ve had questions about this being a central tenant? In that it assumes it’s the CO2. But I may be miss-understanding what they said. I am not denying it so much as saying, this is it? I expected more.”

CO2 in its gaseous state is what is referred to as non-condensing. That means that it does not easily precipitate out of the atmosphere once it is there. On the other hand, water vapor is condensing. This makes the CO2 the “control knob” and it will drag along water vapor as a positive feedback once the CO2 starts warming the atmosphere.

That is what the theory says for a 3C sensitivity. About 1.2C is due to CO2, about 1.5C is due to positive feedback water vapor, and the rest due to other GHGs and albedo changes.

BTW, methane and other GHG’s are weaker control knobs because their residence time is not a long as CO2.

Control knob is a valid term to describe the cause of warming by increases in CO2, such as from volcanoes or man, and cooling from decreases such as natural sequestration. This explains a lot of the last billion years.

Now I ask myself, why abandon the “control know” meme with respect to current ACO2 emissions. And guess what. It’s the “pause’ again.

CO2 emissions continue inexorably and rapidly upward. But reported global average temps “pause”. So we now see a de-emphasis of the “control knob” descriptor as to current temps, and a suggestion that it always just meant the overall impact of CO2 over millenia.

The more I think about it, this is exactly the same reframing as the change in the use of term “heat in the pipeline”, and for exactly the same reason.

Paleoclimate is relevant because it calibrates the sensitivity of the control knob. If man adds back all the CO2 that we had in the iceless hothouse Eocene tens of millions of years ago, that tells us something. You don’t need a model when you have a climate analogy in the paleo eras.

Water vapor is the dominant GHG, Web. I’m pretty sure you know that though. So why are you obfuscating here? When someone mentions CO2, you come back with the suggestion that they don’t understand that GHG warm the planet. When all they suggested was the exact same thing that most of the modelers themselves are admitting: that the effects of CO2 were exaggerated in the GCMs. And so David Appell, you are correct, the models need to be fixed. I suggest it is a strawman to say that everyone who thinks CO2 effects are exaggerated says that we should throw out all models. I think most feel we should fix the models and be very careful about making predictions in the future until we are sure that the models actually work well.

WebHubTelescope: Get rid of the non-condensing CO2 GHG and the earth would be much closer to 255K than the current 288K.

It’s still not known how an increase in the concentration of CO2 in the future will affect the heat transport process in the climate system. Perhaps if we someday face an imminent removal of all of the CO2 in the oceans and atmosphere that calculation will be important for policy makers.

As far as I can tell, and I search out most links provided here (besides obtaining the occasional book or article recommended elsewhere), there is not a single well-studied heat transfer process in the climate system for which the effects of doubling the CO2 concentration have been assessed. All we have is a calculation for the hypothetical “equilibrium” that the result will eventually be an increased downwelling IR at the surface until temperature has risen to increase upwelling IR to match. How the system can evolve toward the “equilibrium”, and whether the “equilibrium” can even exist, have not been studied in detail.

Your dwelling on the effects of a sudden removal of CO2 is irrelevant.

It is based on the myopic notion that CO2 plays the dominant role in determining our planet’s climate.

Since there were no SUVs or coal-fired power plants for most of our planet’s history, while climate moved from extreme to extreme (with no consistent or statistically significant correlation with CO2), this notion is not validated by the evidence that exists.

After a 7C temperature rise, the amount of water vapor the air can hold could easily go up by 50%. That would lead to a limiting positive feedback situation whereby the water vapor could double and then quadruple as it starts to warm toward +33C.

‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’ http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-4-4-1.html

Jim D | September 19, 2013 at 1:05 am |
The CO2 control knob, with sensitivities derived from paleoclimate, explains the last billion years. It is just blinkering yourself to think this effect has stopped just now.
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Really? Pleas tell me the following, then, as of September 19, 751235487 years BC:
1. Global mean surface temperature.
2. Global mean surface temperature trend over a 1,000 year window.
3. Global CO2 concentration.
4. Global CO2 concentration trend over the same 1,000 year window.
5. Sources of your measurements including location of instruments, density, number, distribution.

ksd, that was the
Proterozoic
This was a period of great geological changes in the Earth. Plate tectonics finally became established during this period. The first evidence of multicellularity and sexual reproduction dates to about 1.2 billion years ago, in the middle of the proterozoic. Towards the end, the Earth cooled rapidly, and for a time, may have been completely frozen. It soon recovered, and the first complex multicellular life appeared.

Agreed. The Tyndall experiment has been woefully misinterpreted by Climate Alchemy. The principle of local thermodynamic equilibrium, a result of the law of equipartition of energy, means there can never be gas phase thermalisation of absorbed IR energy from a higher temperature emitter. The thermalisation was at the wall of the tube.

Add to this the stupid, really stupid ‘back radiation’ concept which confuses the radiation field of an emitter with a real energy flux, then to apply the Schuster-Schwarzschild two stream approximation at an optical heterogeneity, is scientific incompetence on an heroic scale.

Add in Sagan’s faulty aerosol optical physics based on misinterpreting van der Hulst’s empirical data, and you have 5 failures, the other 4 being Houghton, Hansen, Trenberth (who being a meteorologist is excused because they are taught incorrect radiation physics) and Ramanathan, a very good experimentalist but a failure at IR physics.

“You don’t need a model when you have a climate analogy in the paleo eras”

A lot of debaters here seem to argue that temperature follows CO2 during the history of earth. That does not at all square with what I have seen. (Rather the opposite – snow ball earth periods with much higher CO2 levels than today.) Can you please give links to studies supporting your notion?

Heh, Edim, in the Paleo record, CO2 rise incontrovertibly follows warming and cooling always follows CO2 rise. Of course, that simple truth is nearly meaningless, which means it has great potential for a future perverted meaning. I don’t know why they didn’t try to demonize CO2 on this basis; cooling is obviously far worse for human society than warming ever can be.

So they make a shroud of death out of a nice warm snuggly blanket instead.
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How about making models that accurately take into account all the forcings and feedbacks? You cannot improve a model that denies the majority of factors affecting the temperature. It would be like trying to improve a baking cake where you left out the flower and baking powder. Good luck with that.

@WebHubTelescope (@WHUT) | September 19, 2013 at 7:29 am |
Using your superior knowledge of fundamental physics, would you pse explain why our moon, having an Effective Temperature of ~270K due to albedo .11, has an actual average temperature of only 197K?
Is this a negative greenhouse effect due to the absence of an atmosphere?

”
Ben Wouters | September 19, 2013 at 8:02 am |
Using your superior knowledge of fundamental physics, would you pse explain why our moon, having an Effective Temperature of ~270K due to albedo .11, has an actual average temperature of only 197K?
Is this a negative greenhouse effect due to the absence of an atmosphere?
“

“Moon has a long diurnal cycle and no atmosphere so it will oscillate wildly about the predicted value of 270K:
>100 K to <400 K"
Actually the coldest temperature on the moon is ~25K, but I mentioned the AVERAGE temperature being 197K.
Given that the 25K is found in deep polar craters where the sun never shines one can assume a geothermal heat flux causing the 25K temperature.
This means the radiation only temperature is more like 172K.
So if we add a similar atmosphere to the moon as we have, and increase moons rotation a bit, the temperature should increase to ~290K as on Earth.
An increase of over 100K out of thin air, impressive.

David, a lot of the “skeptics” have been wondering why there hasn’t been more done to make the models better. The modelers should have been the first group to point out the divergences. That is their job. Instead for years there has been lip service and claims of little to no aerosol “tuning” etc. etc. etc. They had their chance and a few of them blew it badly. You may as well get used to the new “regime:.

Most people do not try to model a system until they have at least half of the inputs into them that are needed. Those that jump the gun and model with only one or two inputs and realize they are missing great amounts of inputs, then stop promoting their models (since they do not work) and try to learn what is missing.

Perhaps that is why so many have not jumped on the model band wagon. Those that exist are worthless. And they are trying to determine, scientifically, what else needs to be added before wasting more time on failed models.

David, the fact is that the modelers have been claiming that their models are good enough to demand action to save the climate, when they should have been doing their homework instead.
They miss one basic point of modeling: if you leave out one important variable, you can still tune the model to match the past, but the model has limited to no predictive power. At this point that left out variable appears to be cosmic rays.
Neither the modelers or David Appell have been able to understand this reality of basic math.
David, I raised the issue with you 5 years ago (from August 2008):
“David Appell: It is completely untrue that climate models “have never been verified.” Climate models back-predict 20th century climate,
JK: Back prediction prove nothing. Back predictions DO NOT VERIFY a model. Only forwards testing can do that and so far they are miserable failures.”
So, David, even I recognized the models failure, but most climate “scientists” continue to claim they are good enough use to mandate measures that will destroy the world’s economy.

“So make your own models.
Where are they?
It’s easy to criticize others.”

Give us a chance. We need fire the extant model makers and replace them with new ones.

Your suggestion is akin to saying if your auto mechanic does shoddy work you should become an mechanic yourself. That’s stupid and unrealistic (just like the climate models). The usual course of action by sane people is to fire the current auto mechanic and try a different one preferably one with a track record of success. So we should fire the climate modelers who phucked up and replace them with people who have a history of getting stuff right. The right thinkers in this case are in the skeptic camp. Write that down.

David, “So make your own models.
Where are they?
It’s easy to criticize others.”

Wrong. Greater than no feedback, ~1C per 4 Wm-2 requires complex feedback that supposedly requires complex models to determine. Anyone that thinks it is greater has to prove it. A miscalculation on your part does not make a crisis on my part.

As a matter of fact, Webby, one of the explanations for the pause requires the ocean to sequester the heat that isn’t currently warming the atmosphere. That’s seawater acting as a greenhouse fluid right there.

That is incorrect. Energy is directly absorbed below the surface, ~14% of solar penetrates to some depth and more penetrates the skin layer. If the Earth were made of a different material it would not be able to transfer energy poleward as efficiently or retain as much energy as it does with liquid oceans which make a better black body fluid. If it wasn’t for liquid oceans there would be no THC which obviously impacts climate.

Fascinating the delusions that a mind will spring up if no math is involved. The most grandiose theory can be articulated by stringing words together, but the entire artifice can be dismantled with some actual physics.

Webster, ” The most grandiose theory can be articulated by stringing words together, but the entire artifice can be dismantled with some actual physics.”

The grandiose theory is the foundation of radiant physics, the black body cavity. An ideal black body cavity converts all the energy absorbed into a uniform electromagnetic spectrum based on its temperature. The average temperature of the oceans is ~4C (334Wm-2) and the average DWLR is ~334 Wm-2. The 334 Wm-2 is approximately equal to the ideal black body temperature of an object with an average surface energy of 340Wm-2 applied. The problem with black body cavities and gray bodies is where does one end and the other begin?

Pekka, “What you write is in no way a counterargument on what I wrote.”

It is not a counter argument it is a clarification. OHT does have an impact on the average surface temperature. There are quite a few papers on how the changes in ocean current routing have had major impacts on climate. The Drake passage has an average current flow of ~125 Sverdrups and has been estimated to have cause a 4 to 5 C drop in average surface temperature. There is a 3C difference between the NH and SH average temperatures as a result. when you say, “Nothing that occurs below the surface affects that.” You are incorrect.

When you lump all greenhouse gases together or pose an illogical no greenhouse gas Earth, then you may be correct, but even over -18C ice there would be a saturation pressure of ~1.6mb for water vapor without any CO2 at all. There will always be some greenhouse effect which is enhanced by uniformly distributed high thermal capacity oceans.

Pekka, “Only the skin temperature has any effect on the power emitted by the oceans as IR cannot escape from layers deeper than the skin.”

The rate energy can be transferred to a cooling skin layer impacts the temperature of the skin layer. So while IR cannot escape from deeper layers, convection and diffusion can replenish the energy at the skin layer. If the surface were asphalt instead of water there would be a different relationship between “average” temperature and DWLR.

Convection, turbulent mixing and over very short distances conduction do replenish the energy lost from the skin through radiation, evaporation and sensible heat transfer to atmosphere. That’s possible only under conditions where the layers below are warmer than the skin having been warmed by solar SW. The temperature profile at depths where the temperature is lower affects to some extent this replenishment, but cannot be the source of heat in that.

Pekka, ” The temperature profile at depths where the temperature is lower affects to some extent this replenishment, but cannot be the source of heat in that.”

No it is not a source of the energy it is a balancing sink, Ocean thermocline/SST/DWLR create a thermal divider as a rough analogy. The 4 C is just the result of thousands of years of gradual mixing and happens to nearly equal the ideal black body energy because what is time to a planet anyway? Changing CO2 will require hundreds of years to find a new balance and based on paleo the deep ocean lag is on the order of 1700 years. There can be plenty of short term variations, but the long term should be the reference.

“The average temperature of the oceans is ~4C (334Wm-2) and the average DWLR is ~334 Wm-2. The 334 Wm-2 is approximately equal to the ideal black body temperature of an object with an average surface energy of 340Wm-2 applied. The problem with black body cavities and gray bodies is where does one end and the other begin?”

This is of interest to me.

334 Wm-2 >> Oceans at 4 C >> 334 Wm-2
That at 4 C, they are a black body when viewed in a certain way.
They are what they receive and they are what they emit.
A black body covered by insulation.

“No it is not a source of the energy it is a balancing sink, Ocean thermocline/SST/DWLR create a thermal divider as a rough analogy. The 4 C is just the result of thousands of years of gradual mixing and happens to nearly equal the ideal black body energy because what is time to a planet anyway?”

The Ocean has been warmer and has warmer for millions of years.
Why would the ocean be warmer than blackbody?

Webster, “Cappy, You set your own trap when you invoked black-body. The radiative spectrum is more uniform with a liquid than the atmosphere.”

That is not a trap, that is the point. The black body oceans create a nice uniform spectrum and saturated water vapor in the atmosphere creates an almost as nice uniform spectrum. The average atmospheric window from the true surface is ~20Wm-2 and the average atmospheric window above the cloud base is ~40Wm-2. Since most marine clouds are super saturated water vapor during evening/night, it is pretty unlikely that CO2 is going to create super duper saturated water vapor marine clouds. That is called a limit and the atmospheric boundary layer would be called a radiant shell.

ragnaar, “They are what they receive and they are what they emit.
A black body covered by insulation.”

More like a layered black body cavity. Instead of one black body cavity with an ideal outer shell, which would be a black body, you have layers of less than ideal black body cavities/shells. The oceans would be the main black body with the moist air envelop or atmospheric boundary layer returning energy for total internal reflection to create a new black body. Then you have the dry well mixed gases creating the outer most shell. If you look for inversions, the ~4C thermocline to surface and surface to ABL, you have like a resonant chamber 4C – ~19C – ~4C. From the top of the ABL to tropopause to stratopause, there is another resonant chamber, this one is 0C – ~-60C – 0C Turbulent mixing doesn’t really end until the turbopause @ ~90-100km and 184K or -89C and 65Wm-2. If you consider that 0C is 315Wm-2 minus 65Wm-2 you would have 240Wm-2 effect true TOA OLR.

That btw is considered “crackpot” thinking along with the radiant shell concept which is odd considering it is a radiant problem.

gbaikie, “The Ocean has been warmer and has warmer for millions of years.
Why would the ocean be warmer than blackbody?”

How warm the oceans are depends on mixing efficiency and all the usual suspects, albedo, solar and GHGs. There is an atmospheric effect which includes a greenhouse effect. What some seem to miss is the ocean mixing efficiency which changed dramatically with the opening of the Drake passage and closing of Panama.

Pekka says 390 Watts which is utter rubbish unless you acommpanty it by saying it absorbs 350 Watts at the same for a net (global average) emittance of 40W. The lion’s share of course is latent heat loss.

I’m not making this up it’s from Texas A&M online textbook for Introduction to Physical Oceanography. You boys (you know who you are) should check it out so you don’t keep talking out of your asses about heat budget specifics.

Pekka, “Only the skin temperature has any effect on the power emitted by the oceans as IR cannot escape from layers deeper than the skin.”

Wrong again. There are three channels. Conductive, latent, and radiative. Humidity, winds, and air temperature all effect the power emitted by the ocean. Pekka got one thing right – it’s all emitted from the skin layer. Which is exactly the point. Shortwave energy from the sun penetrates the ocean and warms it to a depth of up to 100 meters at the speed of light. The only way for that energy to escape is it has to be mechanically transported to the skin layer. It’s sad that I need to say that mechanical transport does not happen at the speed of light. This is how the greenhouse effect works in any media which is transparent to shortwave and opaque to longwave. The ocean is no exception. Shortwave energy enters easier than it escapes after thermalization at depth which causes a Planck response until it can escape as fast as it enters. Like duh. Fercrisakes.

“So make your own models.
Where are they?
It’s easy to criticize others.”

Because I’m not trying to tell people to give up their economic likelihood because my models predict CAGW. The modellers/their proponents are trying to inflict their hypothesis on billions of people, and their only answer is something very costly (solar and wind).

Despite the failure of the models to predict the last 15 years, or whatever it has been, that doesn’t mean the hypothesis is fundamentally wrong, but don’t you think before you throw the yolk on everyone to do your bidding, you ought to make sure it’s really necessary?

In fact, if I were to have a model that so poorly tracked the observations, and I had asked for such enormous changes, I think I might feel chagrined. Yet, there appears to be no such reaction from any of the big warmists, and they appear to be doubling down, trebling down, etc.

I think these people have a David and Goliath view of themselves. They are the David, trying to slay the evil Goliath of corporatists, and save the people, or even the planet. Yet, as one of the people, I view the warmists the opposite way. They are the Goliath trying to put the yolk on me and the rest of humanity for their unproven views.

I’m not so certain what future climate will hold, but it had better be right, if you expect to control billions of people based on your “hypothesis.” The gall to require others prove you wrong when the planet is obliging shows how excessively arrogant warmists are.

Captdallas:
It’s been an interesting discussion.
With a true system temperature of 4 C., it would seem the observed system GHG effect is 23 C., not the the atmospheric effect of 33 K. While the atmosphere is 14 C because of the 33 GHG effect, the Oceans are only 4 C. Or, maybe I just crossed a bridge too far.

My main point was that for IR it doesn’t matter at all, what the average temperature of the ocean water is, only the average surface temperature matters. (The rest of ocean water affects the surface, but that’s another issue.) To be more precise the amount of IR radiated by oceans is determined by the average of the fourth power of the skin temperature. That’s what appears in the Stefan-Boltzmann formula that can be used because the water has a high emissivity over the whole LWIR spectrum.

Based on that and taking the emissivity into account oceans emit about 401 W/m^2 on the average, 1% more than the average when land areas are included, and as much as a black body at 17C. The same thin skin layer that emits that average power absorbs about 360 W/m^2 according to the recent (2012) published estimates. These values are averages over all ocean areas. At high latitudes both the emission and the absorption are smaller and in tropics larger.

The net is everywhere in the direction of energy loss from the skin. I don’t have numbers for that, but the net is smaller when the absolute humidity is high, i.e. over warm water, in spite of the larger gross values in both direction.

1) Shortwave heats the ocean instantly to a depth of up to a hundred meters depending on turbidity at about 200W/m2 in the tropics (Q-SW).

2) Evaporation is the primary cooling mechanism, again in the tropics, which can only occur at the very surface or in bubbles in breaking waves slightly below the surface at 120W/m2 (Q-L).

3) Radiation is the secondary cooling mechanism, still mostly in the tropics, which also occurs only at the very surface, at some 60W/m2 (Q-LW).

4) Conduction is a tertiary cooling mechanism at some 20W/m2 which can be ignored for most practical purposes over the ocean where there’s very little difference between ocean skin temperature and air temperature.

That’s all. No babble. No hundreds of Watts of longwave radiation in an obfuscating Chinese fire drill fashion just a net emission half the magnitude of latent energy in water vapor.

Now, back to the crux. Solar shortwave heats the ocean instantly to a depth of tens of meters. The only way for that energy to escape is mechanical transport to the surface where it mostly leaves via evaporation. There is a difference in impedance for incoming and outgoing energy. Incoming has a less resisitive path because no mechanical transport is involved. This causes a Planck response across the entire depth of shortwave absorption until the higher temperature from the Planck response compensates for the disparity in impedance so that energy in equals energy out.

The Planck response IS greenhouse warming. The ocean is responsible for most of the earth’s greenhouse warming not the wispy atmosphere above it.

ragnaar, “With a true system temperature of 4 C., it would seem the observed system GHG effect is 23 C., not the the atmospheric effect of 33 K. While the atmosphere is 14 C because of the 33 GHG effect, the Oceans are only 4 C. Or, maybe I just crossed a bridge too far.”

No you are in the right area. The oceans do not extend to the poles. They are a separate system with a separate energy applied and different time constant. If they mix all the way to the poles, they would have a different average temperature. You simply have two systems to consider and one holds a lot more energy than the other.

“The Planck response IS greenhouse warming. The ocean is responsible for most of the earth’s greenhouse warming not the wispy atmosphere above it.”

Witness how a person with no understanding of the fundamental laws of physics can get it totally wrong. This is the reason that degrees in physics require a proficiency in advanced math. One can try to bluff their way on a blog comment area using rhetoric, but there is nowhere to hide when all you have is a blue exam book in front of you.

Grade: F

Let me put this another way. If the question on a earth sciences exam was asking you to explain why the earth’s current temperature is about 33C higher than expected based on black-body radiative physics, and you wrote in the little blue book: “The ocean is responsible for most of the earth’s greenhouse warming not the wispy atmosphere above it.”, the instructor would have no alternative but to place a big red X through your answer and give you no credit. You would then likely fail the class.

Except for Curry, who may give you half a point if you said there was some uncertainty in your assertion.

I hope the little kiddies read this and understand how physics is taught. Kranks get weeded out.

Wrong Way Appell has the cart before the horse; of course we hope the models improve, but they seem stuck in a dead end. We’ll probably have to understand climate better before they improve. Less fantasy, more forensics.
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Wow – Roy Spencer says: “(We also have our own paper, slated to be published on October 31, which will present new results on climate sensitivity and the role of natural climate variations in recent warming.)”

“I’m sure the politicians believed we would have had new energy policies in place by now…” “…even by the most optimistic estimates renewable energy won’t amount to more than 15% of global energy generation in the coming decades.

“The lack of understanding of basic economic principles on the part of politicians and scientists alike led to the unrealistic expectation that humanity would allow the lifeblood of the global economy — inexpensive energy — to be restricted.”

A lot of politicians seem to believe they can create economic goods to a large extent. Perhaps the thinking was something like this: We can invent or improve things to such an extent, that traditional sources of energy will not be needed. I suppose the flip side of not believing in markets is the belief that If you were only in charge of them, things would be better.

So to add to the list of problems, we might have that the technology breakthroughs have not occurred at a fast enough rate and the status quo of, We need cheap energy, still stands in the way. Another thing that hasn’t played out.

Ragnaar,
Cheap energy has nothing to do with AGW mitigation. Cheap energy is associated with an abundance of easily extracted high-grade fossil fuels.
Expensive energy has to do with scarcity of high-grade fossil fuels, and the transition to the remaining hard-to-extract low-grade fossil fuels. That’s where the global economy is at right now, a turning point having to do with the continued depletion of crude oil and other high-grade fossil fuels.

I think Old Roy Boy’s hysteria is feigned. The ultimate move to alternative energies has nothing to do with AGW — without AGW, we would still have to transition away from fossil fuels.

What concerns scientists such as Hansen and Pierrehumbert [1] is the possibility of bootstrapping the very low-grade fossil fuels such as oil shale, which will emit much more CO2 for the equivalent energy yield.
That would put atmospheric CO2 through the roof.

“The lack of understanding of basic economic principles on the part of politicians and scientists alike led to the unrealistic expectation that humanity would allow the lifeblood of the global economy — inexpensive energy — to be restricted

Gee, that’s funny. And I thought that political empowerment, civil rights, representative governments, access to education, access to healthcare, civic society, democratic institutions, freedom, etc., are all crucial elements in the lifeblood of the global economy.

How could I have been so wrong, so as to not realize that only cheap energy is the lifeblood?

“Ask yourself why the common sense stuff that I say is regarded as news.” – JC

Maybe because with the decline of the big papers, simplistic personality based controveries are easy and chea pwith little journalistic effort required to churn them out, made even easier by people willing to be cast in those roles, so they can get the public exposure they seek.

To add to that video, at about 39 minutes he talks about Eureka and something amazing it does it seems to do. The Future of Science? I don’t know. I am not sure Eureka is considered a model but, I am wondering how it might be used to improve things?

Hmmm, why would common sense stuff in regard to climate change be considered news? Could it be that what shows up in the news media regarding the climate models isn’t that common and really doesn’t make much sense?

They well understood the five basic mathematical equations said to define our atmospheric system. however the factors that impact on the five basic variables in those equations is simply enormous. Some are known of course, but as time passes it becomes apparent that many more are imperfectly understood whilst yet more have yet to even be identified.

My money is still on natural variability, as to date the modern era hasn’t exceeded the extremes these represent through the Holocene..

Mr. Appel, it is funny that you should look at what’s written above is attacking, rather than acknowledging what has been clearly shown in peer-reviewed literature.

The opposite of agreement is dispute. The opposite of denial is embrace. The fact that the 97% agreement with the basics of climate science includes Judith, myself and most commenters here does not imply denial, embrace, agreement or dispute. That’s how bland the criteria are.

The models are flawed . Not useless, not hopeless, just flawed. They catch the broad trends but overestimate the decadal warming. That’s not denial, embrace, agreement or dispute. That’s observation.

When observation becomes linked with the negative terms used for Judith, including by you, we have crossed into political attack. It is shameful.

Well, I have a suggestion for improving the models, but I don’t know if you’ll like it. I have even heard hints that this is what some groups are doing.
To wit: Acknowledge that global surface temperature is not a workable metric for testing climate models. One data point per month arriving is just insanely far too slow for proper testing and validation. There is no way currently to check if new models are any good at all, or are just tuned to fit the past and will be hopeless at the future.
Instead, models need to be tested against a large amount of regional data of many different kinds, enough so that they can be validated in a month or two. Test and validate them, and determine how far in the future they can predict accurately. Refuse to make predictions beyond that range, even if politicians insist. Find out by refining models which types of data lend themselves to longer-term predictions, and which are hopelessly chaotic.

If climate models can simulate the 30 C swings from winter to summer in regions, or the 30 C differences between the tropics and polar areas, why would they not be able to simulate a 3 C climate change? It is not like it is outside the their operating range or something.

miker613 wrote:Well, I have a suggestion for improving the models, but I don’t know if you’ll like it. I have even heard hints that this is what some groups are doing.
To wit: Acknowledge that global surface temperature is not a workable metric for testing climate models. One data point per month arriving is just insanely far too slow for proper testing and validation.

That’s a complaint, not a suggestion. Obviously, models are constrained by computational resources. Do you have some magical way of overcoming that? And are you really sure that they aren’t doing delta(t) = 1 day now?

‘In each of these model–ensemble comparison studies, there are important but difficult questions: How well selected are the models for their plausibility? How much of the ensemble spread is reducible by further model improvements? How well can the spread can be explained by analysis of model differences? How much is irreducible imprecision in an AOS?

Simplistically, despite the opportunistic assemblage of the various AOS model ensembles, we can view the spreads in their results as upper bounds on their irreducible imprecision. Optimistically, we might think this upper bound is a substantial overestimate because AOS models are evolving and improving. Pessimistically, we can worry that the ensembles contain insufficient samples of possible plausible models, so the spreads may underestimate the true level of irreducible imprecision (cf., ref. 23). Realistically, we do not yet know how to make this assessment with confidence.’

In principle the solution is pdf’s generated from perturbed physics models. This has been understood for some time.

‘In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. The most we can expect to achieve is the prediction of the probability distribution of the system’s future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. This reduces climate change to the discernment of significant differences in the statistics of such ensembles. The generation of such model ensembles will require the dedication of greatly increased computer resources and the application of new methods of model diagnosis. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive, but such statistical information is essential.’ TAR WG1 14.2.2.2

In reality climate and models will still diverge as a result of climate shifts which are not predictable.

‘”The winds change the ocean currents which in turn affect the climate. In our study, we were able to identify and realistically reproduce the key processes for the two abrupt climate shifts,” says Prof. Latif. “We have taken a major step forward in terms of short-term climate forecasting, especially with regard to the development of global warming. However, we are still miles away from any reliable answers to the question whether the coming winter in Germany will be rather warm or cold.” Prof. Latif cautions against too much optimism regarding short-term regional climate predictions: “Since the reliability of those predictions is still at about 50%, you might as well flip a coin.” http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm

In practice they pull a solution that looks goods out of their arses and send it to the IPCC.

‘AOS models are therefore to be judged by their degree of plausibility, not whether they are correct or best. This perspective extends to the component discrete algorithms, parameterizations, and coupling breadth: There are better or worse choices (some seemingly satisfactory for their purpose or others needing repair) but not correct or best ones. The bases for judging are a priori formulation, representing the relevant natural processes and choosing the discrete algorithms, and a posteriori solution behavior.‘ McWilliams 2007

1. STOP using models that are missing obvious things, like volcanos.
Go ahead and see how many models in CMIP5 either neglect volcanos
or lump the forcing in with solar
2. Stop using various generations of the same model and pretending they
are different models.
3. Stop using models that get polar amplification wrong.

SO first stop the addiction to the democracy of models.

Next.

Establish key metrics.
Pick the best models
Put them through I V & V
control the configuration

you cannot improve what you dont measure. To some extent it doesnt matter how bad or good the models are today. There is no process for improving them. The key to improvement is NOT for people to suggest a fix here or a new equation there. The key is

1. establish metrics
2. Use them
3. No code changes that take you backwards

Start with callendars 1938 model if you have to, but establish metrics, use them, and make changes that improve performance against these metrics.

Good discussion on models thanks to David A, Chief and Mosher for their comments. Models, however, seem to be based on assumptions of reductionism and aggregatability of the effects of parameters are oversimplistic and failing to account correctly for attribution and for multicollinearities between them. That is to say, correlated, but with no apparent causal connection between one or the other.

‘Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Gödel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the calculation (see ref. 26). ‘ McWilliams – http://www.pnas.org/content/104/21/8709.full

Which broad trends? They badly underestimated Arctic warming, they nearly got the polarity (to say of the magnitude) wrong on global average temperature trend, the had to walk back sea level rise to knee high to a preschooler in the year 2100, predicted a mid-tropospheric hot-spot that can’t be found, predicted an increase in severe storms then a record lull in hurricane activity comes along, they can’t even historically model short or long term ocean events like AMO, PDO, and ENSO… in short they missed every broad trend and don’t even attempt to do short trends.

On exactly what did you base that statement other than a serendiptous concurrence of model prediction of global warming with a super El Nino which, if you ignored the stair-step nature of the increase, made a model prediction look credible for a few years.

David, I don’t think your response addressed my suggestion. I wasn’t suggesting that they need more computational resources, or that the mesh size isn’t small enough. I was suggesting that there is no good way of validating current models. They are all tested against “the last century of global surface temperatures”, near as I can tell. That data source isn’t flowing very fast, and it isn’t that much data. We don’t even really know if it’s possible to model global surface temperatures over such a time period, or if the chaos that affects weather affects that as well.
Some modellers have claimed that they can indeed model it and have already – look, we can back-cast for a century! That claim is now known to be wrong, given the big difference in skill between that back-casting and the forecasting of the same models.
Therefore, I’m suggesting that the claim that they can make that prediction be dropped until it is tested. Instead, they should be making predictions and testing them on a lot more data, on a much smaller time scale. The models should be trusted only to predict that which they have shown that they can predict accurately. [Others correct me if I’m wrong; my understanding is that there isn’t any model today that can predict such regional variables accurately. They should continue to work on it.]
Pro-AGW will not be able to accept this suggestion, as it would mean admitting that we have absolutely no idea what temperatures will look like in fifty years.

But how do you predict volcanoes such than you can put them in a predictive model?

Metrics are great, I would like to hear what metrics should be used to judge the predictive performance of the models.

I would look forward to Judith’s paper on natural variability so we can get a handle on how much that can affect the performance of models. How much is natural variability? Plus or minus 0.2 C or 0.3 C. Do we include natural things that we can measure like volcanoes and solar effects?

To me there is a problem distinguishing which problem we are using models to address and which of them is more important because the models can’t do both at the same time.

A single model run can express natural variability, but have one that accurately matches the natural variables, ENSO, AMO and the rest, is an initial conditions problem, and due to the number of parameters involved, is just unlikely.

Run as a boundary value problem, using an ensemble of models to average out natural variability leads us to the non-quandary we seem to be in. Over short periods ensembles of models and nature will not match and the current “pause” is merely due to extended La Nina conditions, which an ensemble of models is not going to predict.

Back to the metrics, I would like to see numerical expressions of model reality mismatch that would be acceptable to judge models good enough to use for the policy decisions that we would make.

I would like more constructive criticism of models performance than models have failed, models are crap, models are wrong, models can’t do this, can’t do that ect.

‘Prediction of weather and climate are necessarily uncertain: our observations of weather and climate are uncertain, the models into which we assimilate this data and predict the future are uncertain, and external effects such as volcanoes and anthropogenic greenhouse emissions are also uncertain. Fundamentally, therefore, therefore we should think of weather and climate predictions in terms of equations whose basic prognostic variables are probability densities ρ(X,t) where X denotes some climatic variable and t denoted time. In this way, ρ(X,t)dV represents the probability that, at time t, the true value of X lies in some small volume dV of state space.’ (Predicting Weather and Climate – Palmer and Hagedorn eds – 2006)

Modeling major regional seasonal shifts like winter to summer, which occur every year, is much easier than trying to model infinitesimally small global shifts over long periods of time, based on incomplete input parameters and globally and annually averaging.

Let’s say the winter/summer shift is 30C every year.

We’ve had around 0.8C increase in the “globally and annually averaged land and sea surface temperature anomaly” since 1850 – and this has occurred in 30-year multi-decadal fits and spurts, which no one can really explain, including the most recent “pause” that has lasted over a decade.

By far most cogent – and the best – post in this thread is by Wijnand at September 18, 2013 at 9:32 am.

The problem is not that the climate models need to be improved. No model is perfect and no model is intended to be perfect.

The real problem is that the climate models are being misused

The GCMs and energy balance models are useful heuristic tools. Understandings of climate can be tested by building models from those understandings and then comparing the model outputs to behaviours of the observed climate.

But using those heuristic tools as indicators of future climate is a hubristic misuse of the models: it assumes the models are built from adequately complete and accurate understandings of climate.

But the true purpose of the models is to determine if those understandings are – or are not – adequately complete and accurate.

And the models will be improved by amendment or addition to understandings of climate as they are discovered.

As Wijnand suggests, people should be sacked if they misuse the models for the casting of runes to predict the future,

Walter,
The ‘pause’ is misnamed. It should actually be referred to as a “compensation”. This is in line with conventional engineering and scientific nomenclature whereby the primary trending value is reduced or compensated by a naturally varying term, which we could describe as noise. The noise in effect masks the actual signal.

As with all noise, the longer the time series the more that the upward trend will be revealed.

Tamino has an interesting recent post where he describes how this compensating behavior might come about:

OK, got it. But I don’t think it is any more possible to predict long term future cooling, or pausing, than it is to predict long term warming. More to the point, I kinda hope you, and kim, are wrong. Some more warming, on average, strikes me as a good thing.

Plot a series of points on a line with slope = .5. Each point has a higher value than the previous point. Now change the slope to zero. Plot an additional 15 points. Each of these 15 points has the “highest value” (read Warmest Year) in the last 15 points.

David Jay…you make about as much sense as a wheelbarrow full of rocks! All the last decade temperature would not fall on a line as there is, of course, variation each year. So, maybe, you would like to make a real attempt to sound rational !!

“The distressing thing is how some people are all ready to attack models, instead of helping make them better. ”

This has to be the silliest comment I’ve seen in a long while. Are you afraid we’re going to hurt the models’ feelings? The fundamental problem is you literally cannot imagine that the alarmists might not have the moral high ground after all. I almost feel sorry for you guys. It’s only going to get worse from here, David A.

Do you have another way to project future climate than via a model?
No, I didn’t think so.
So what are your suggestions for improving them?

Yes. It’s called climatology. Climatology makes predictions of future behavior based on past behaviors. It’s how we can say with confindence that it will be warmer in the summer in Atlanta than Pittsburgh and how we can say with confidence it will be warmer in both cities in the summer than in the winter, and how we can say there will be more hurricanes in the fall than in the spring, and how we can say if there’s a La Nina in the Pacific there’s a drought in Texas, and so and so forth.

Climatology predicted “the pause”, by the way. It predicts it will last two to three decades. You don’t keep betting on a horse that loses races to win, dummy. You bet on past winners to win in the future. Past success is no guarantee of future performance but it’s still the best indicator we have.

I think David Appell’s love affair with the climate model has reached the point where intervention is required. Else it will likely end like that bit of a row with the Capulets a few centuries back.

David, the models suck. Just like that fettuccine alfredo I had in that restaurant. I don’t know why the alfredo was so bad, but I know not to eat it again. Same for the climate models. I don’t care if they get ‘fixed’ or not.

As Phillip Tetlock has shown, prediction of the future by experts is still beyond the ken of humans. If climate scientists have decided that they have figured out how to predict the future, I’m really not interested until they prove it. Bring me some proof, we can talk. Till then, get in line with the economists, the financial gurus, and the guy who says he’s got a lock on the Vegas line this week for the big game on Sunday.

Climatology makes predictions of future behavior based on past behaviors

That would work great. What has repeated over and over for ten thousand years will happen again.

The problem is that they have decided that what has happened over and over has stopped happening and what has never happened will now happen.

What kind of logic is that?

Temperature and Sea Level Data are on track to repeat the cycles of the past all for the same reasons. No actual data supports the new, unnatural Theory. CO2 IS higher than before in the last ten thousand years. Not even one other thing is out of bounds of the past ten thousand years and not even one other thing is headed out of bounds.

Only Model Output goes out of bounds. Get the models to repeat the cycles of the past ten thousand years and then the will predict another similar cycle.

From Curry’s BEST data, this is the simplest formulation
Fit = alpha + beta * log( CO2 / 277.3 ) + gamma * Volcanic
alpha: 8.3421049
beta: 4.4663687
gamma: -0.0151461
The gamma is fairly inconsequential and we are left with the classic log sensitivity of temperature to CO2 concentration. Beta in this case is the equivalent of 3.09C for ECS.

The Lacis paper seeks to explain the 33C discrepancy in the earth’s temperature by invoking GHG theory. If the paper is “upended soon” that would mean that some other theory will need to take its place.

Does the “dalyplanet” theory rely on the invocation of sprites and fairies?

‘In summary, although there is independent evidence for decadal changes in TOA radiative fluxes over the last two decades, the evidence is equivocal. Changes in the planetary and tropical TOA radiative fluxes are consistent with independent global ocean heat-storage data, and are expected to be dominated by changes in cloud radiative forcing. To the extent that they are real, they may simply reflect natural low-frequency variability of the climate system.’ http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-4-4-1.html

Chief,
Thanks for answering my idiot question, I see your last cite answers quite nicely, “Climate forcing results in an imbalance in the TOA radiation budget…”
It may be a chaotic system but if you lean on it in one direction you are going to have a warmer but still chaotic state.
Albedo may be the captain crunch variable but it still is the dependent variable while CO2 remains the most significant independent variable, and its the one we are changing, so the control knob metaphor fits.

David, we policy sceptics would love better models; but the models as they stand are worse than useless for policy.

The simple fact is that nothing in the current models should be taken for any thing more than a call for more research. No carbon dioxide pricing, no bans on new coal, no windmills…just better, more realistic, models.

David AppellThe distressing thing is how some people are all ready to attack models, instead of helping make them better.

Attacking ideas is the way science works, and what drives advances. No criticism, no skepticism = no progress. The unthinking acceptance of the Consensus approach, and the mental mollycoddling and funding effect on research within academia, is the death of science.

The “distress” is you complain of, the is blogosphere and media helping to breath life and integrity back into to those who are paid to do science for us (using our money). A vital part of any piece of software succeeding, is the existence of a team of testers doing their damnedest to break the product.

We’ve given the modellers vast quantities of blood and treasure to get it right. They haven’t come up with their side of the deal. They should put their models right (if they know how) or admit they can’t and give up.

Not my problem that they’ve made such a mess of their job. And – just like anyone else we pay to do something who fails – I reserve my right to criticise.

Appell, There are some well known things that would help the models. One thing is to use backward differentiation schemes for time marching instead of the unstable leapfrog scheme, which believe it or not is used in the NCAR community model. But the main thing is just rigorous numerical testing on model problems for example and newer numerical error control techniques.

The only way to fix the models is to admit they are not working right and let people from diverse fields help fix whatever is wrong. Way too much CO2 feedback junk and not near enough Albedo influence. When oceans are warm and wet it snows more. They reduce Albedo as Earth Warms.That works to some point and then the increasing snowfall turns that around. This happens in every warm period and a cold period always follows. The Albedo did not reduce because earth got warmer. Earth got warmer because Albedo was decreasing after the high point of Albedo in the Little Ice Age. That is over or nearly over again as always happens in a warm period.

David Appell: The distressing thing is how some people are all ready to attack models, instead of helping make them better.

You’re not saying that the models are good enough to base policy on, are you?

Is your end goal to understand climate, or to get your name in the newspaper?

My understanding is informed in part by following all the links that are suggested to me by people who respond/criticize my posts. The best to date are some articles linked by Chief Hydrologist, and two books by one of the co-authors of those papers. Links provided by WebHubTelescope have been good reads. Whose links I don’t much like I won’t mention — I don’t respond to most of them.

I expect that most readers here are trying to understand climate better.

David, aren’t you the green advocate that claimed, falsely (on Roger Pielke Jr.’s site) that the IPCC doesn’t “make predictions”? Only makes “projections” (a weasel word if there ever was one)? And used a very snide tone to imply the Pielke was knowingly hiding things from readers?

Within minutes, an expert who relies on the reality of IPCC documents, not “I wish it was like this” fantasies, quoted chapter and verse for you, from an actual IPCC document which said that they were projecting various outcomes.

But your snide, accusatory tone keeps up here. Kind of like you are denying actual facts, again, no? This time the are facts about actual temperature trends.

Judith’s goal is not to get her name in the papers. You may have read about all the nastiness that someone who leaves the IPCC island voluntarily will be subject too. Judith would have been much more comfortable NOT doing what she does, NOT getting her name vilified. But thank goodness she has decided that bringing science back to its roots of inquiry was more important to her than the comfort of not being constantly attacked.

Yes, her goal is very much to understand climate. You do that by examining factual data. You make models better by comparing them with on the ground factual data.

Judith’s goal is to understand climate, contra your snide comment.

Your goal, on the other hand, is to attack those who are trying to understand both reality, and the failure, to date, of climate models.

You owe Judith a public apology. I don’t expect you will give it, but I will think more of you if you do.

that use only one value for each parameter! Modelers presumably could look into their ensembles and find many that have climate sensitivity low enough to produce overall warming trends that match observations for the last half-century, but they don’t want to do this when climate is so chaotic and the “average” random set of parameters gives relatively high climate sensitivity.

The word nice underwent an inversion; Nice is derived from the Latin nescius meaning ‘ignorant’. In medieval and Renaissance literature, nice has generally unfavorable meanings akin to ‘foolish, stupid’ and ‘wanton, loose-mannered’, It inverted, probably because of its sarcastic use, mean ‘agreeable’ or ‘pleasant’ around the 16 century. ‘Bad’ is undergoing a similar transition, so that ‘bad’ can mean ‘good’, and we do not know if this inversion will be come stable or universal.
I can see denier undergoing an inversion, in the context of Climate Science. The deniers are going to be the people who disbelieve reality and instead transfer their support to in silico descriptions of reality.
David Appell could be their poster-boy, of people have solved the 3D printing technology in a few years.

Its called the dialectical.method. Hegel did it ter turn words
like ‘freedom’ inter their opposite, convenient ter the Prussian
State where he was philosopher in residence. See me latest
adishun ofSerf Under_ground ‘History’s Chequered History.’
Beth the serf

I can see denier undergoing an inversion, in the context of Climate Science.

You seem to be mistaken. The meaning of “denier” is to compare people to apologists for the holocaust. And of course, “skeptics” are very “concerned” about that connotation, and of course, they’d never be so crass as to characterize others in such a way merely because they disagree with them about climate change.

There’s no way they’ll start using “denier” to demean other people. Especially since they already have “true believer,” and “eugenicist” and “eco-Nazi,” and “fraud” and “statist” etc., etc.

French coin, early 15c., from Old French dener, a small coin of slight value, roughly equivalent to the English penny, in use in France from the time of Charlemagne to early modern times, from Latin denarium, from denarius, name of a Roman coin (cf. Spanish dinero; see denarius).

“In the state of nature, liberty consists of being free from any superior power on Earth. People are not under the will or lawmaking authority of others but have only the law of nature for their rule. In political society, liberty consists of being under no other lawmaking power except that established by consent in the commonwealth. People are free from the dominion of any will or legal restraint apart from that enacted by their own constituted lawmaking power according to the trust put in it. Thus, freedom is not as Sir Robert Filmer defines it: ‘A liberty for everyone to do what he likes, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws.’ Freedom is constrained by laws in both the state of nature and political society. Freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of nature. Freedom of people under government is to be under no restraint apart from standing rules to live by that are common to everyone in the society and made by the lawmaking power established in it. Persons have a right or liberty to (1) follow their own will in all things that the law has not prohibited and (2) not be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, and arbitrary wills of others.”

It is what are in these words that matter most to people around the world.
Slave wage or Liberty…

Not saying anything new here, but most skeptics are deniers of future catastrophe. Any warming man can do is unlikely to be catastrophic; I do not deny catastrophic cooling, and it is far more likely than a warming catastrophe.

The damages/benefits ratio has been grossly miscalculated for warming, and that for cooling is not only not calculated, it is hardly considered at all. Perilous neglect by the cognoscenti.
================

Not saying anything new here, but most skeptics are deniers of future catastrophe.

I don’t think most skeptics are deniers of the possibility of future catastrophe. I think a better way of saying it is: Skeptics are not persuaded that:

1. man made global warming will be catastrophic
2. man’s contribution is a major contribution to climate change
3. the proposed GHG emission mitigation policies will make any measurable difference to the climate
4. the costs of such policies will not do far more harm than good to human wellbeing world wide.

I have never been bothered by the word “denier”, Despite the warmists’ attempts to load the word with emotional baggage. Conservatives are used to much worse from the progressives who dominate western politics.

But denier is fine with me.

I deny that anyone knows the global mean temperature of the entire climate system to within tenths of a degree at any given time, let alone changes on that scale over any time period.

I deny that climate models can predict future temperatures with a sufficient degree of accuracy or precision to justify any of the massive government based policy initiatives pushed by the “consensus:.

I deny that anyone knows the global average sea level to within millimeters at any given time, let alone identifying the rate of any change with such precision.

I deny that paleo-proxies can accurately show global average temperature to within anywhere near tenths of a degree, at any time, or over any period.

I deny that the consensus has a clue about the economic ramifications of what they are demanding with their policy of decarbonization.

I deny that the consensus has any idea whether the changes that would result from warming of 2C over the next 80 to 100 years would be net beneficial or harmful.

I deny that the consensus has any coherent plan that has any realistic possibility of implementation that would actually reduce global CO2 emissions to the extent they claim necessary to forestall thermageddon.

Despite the warmists’ attempts to load the word with emotional baggage.

Yes, indeed. Those “warmists” made “skeptics” whine incessantly about being called “deniers.” Those “warmists” made “skeptics” get all emotional.

You see, whey you look at events from the correct angle, all bad things are caused by those Gary doesn’t like, and of course, all bad things are caused by “progressives.” Why “progressives” even made people like Dick Cheney think that they are conservatives.

kim
September 17, 2013 at 9:26 pmI do not deny catastrophic cooling, and it is far more likely than a warming catastrophe.

Indeed. As I noted in my post a few weeks ago, if Vostok is any indication, cooling is most definitely the long-term worry. That being said, I am also of the opinion that catastrophic cooling isn’t a real concern either any time in the near future (and if I had to put money down I would say not for millennia).

Not saying anything new here, but most skeptics are deniers of future catastrophe.

kim is comparing “skeptics” to holocause apologists. Man, the venom directed his way will, certainly, be just horrible. There’s nothing quite so “concerning” to “skeptics” as being compared to holocaust apologists.

“Not saying anything new here, but most skeptics are deniers of future catastrophe.”

—–
A true skeptic is not a denier of anything and in fact a true skeptic would state that it seems very likely that some time in the future a momentous catastrophe of one form or another shall befall the human race and eventually the terminal catastrophe shall strike. The longer we go without finding evidence of other intelligent civilizations in the universe and the more planets outside our solar system we discover, the more Fermi’s paradox is is heightened and the more likely it seems the “Great Filter” is in our future. See:

Much skepticism is about the systemic corruption and bias in the climate industry – as evidenced by the industry’s reaction to events like Climategate, ie official coverups and deafening silence.
now
Had the likes of Mann and Jones been sacked, skepticism would today have far fewer adherents.

This gives an ECS that is a little above 3C for a doubling of CO2 based on real-world observations of land warming (which is closest to the eventual ECS). It also so happens that 3C is approximately the mean value for all the models.

Is this the “skeptical” or “denier” view? Please explain why black is white and up is down while you are at it.

Joshua writes: “The sun sets in the west.”
I realize this is your feeble attempt at wit, but from my POV tonally consistent with much of what you contribute here. But let me ask you, since you’ve taken the daring position that we won’t know ” for sure” for another 75 years-100 years (I won’t bother asking how you arrived at that conclusion), what is your recommendation WRT to policy. I don’t believe you’ve ever made that clear.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) made headlines recently by concluding that fossil fuels received far more global subisides than renewable energy in 2010. However, it appears that the IEA survey only included data from the countries with the largest fossil fuel subsidies, which are mainly developing countries whose economies largely depend on fossil fuel production. National Geographic’s The Great Energy Challenge also includes fossil fuel subsidy data from developed countries (Figure 1), bringing the total global value close to $500 billion for 2010.

Thanks for asking rather than assuming you know the answer, finding me guilty by association, and then insulting me base on erroneous analysis. Unlike so many of your Climate Etc. brethren, it seems that you may be making progress towards losing the quotation marks around your identity as a “skeptic.”

I think that the first step is comprehensive cost/benefit analysis combine with a stakeholder dialog/participatory approach to risk analysis.

Some “skeptics,” IMO, have made some useful contributions towards deepening cost/benefit analysis. Judith is an example, IMO, with her focus on quantifying uncertainty. But unfortunately, it is a rare “skeptic” who takes participatory dialog seriously, in my experience and in by observations. Of course, most of the engaged participants on the other side of the climate wars are no better at serious dialog.

But the biggest pieces that I see missing from cost/benefit analysis from the “skeptical” side of the climate wars are that: (1) they don’t take seriously the need to include consideration of the negative externalities associated with fossil fuel usage. I don’t see how any cost/benefit analysis can be considered comprehensive w/o such and (2) despite paying lip service to uncertainty, they don’t allow for uncertainly, sufficiently, w/r/t the “fat tail” of deeply impactful, if not particularly probable, anthropogenically attributable climate chance. From my experience, many “skeptics” essentially negate the value of their input to the cost/benefit discussion by seeking to declare victory rather than maintaining a consistent approach towards the uncertainty of impacts from climate change.

As for not knowing anything determinative for decades, read what Mojib Latif has to say and you’ll see why I put that sort of window on clarifying the uncertainties.

Oh, I forgot, you didn’t bother to ask how I arrived at that conclusion. Sorry for telling you. I shouldn’t have done that. Why should I think that you’d consider the reasoning behind my opinions to be relevant to you asking me about my opinions on directly related issues?

I think that the first step is comprehensive cost/benefit analysis combine with a stakeholder dialog/participatory approach to risk analysis.

I’ve seen cost/benefit analysis used to support pre-determined conclusions, I’ve never seen one used for honest decision-making. (Which doesn’t mean such things don’t exist.)

The problem is, we’re talking about trends and influences extending decades into the future, and it’s impossible to produce an honest cost/benefit analysis that doesn’t end up in tangled uncertainties. Limiting assumptions have to be made regarding technological development, which will usually be made on the basis of pre-conceptions, as steered by motivated thinking.

Development of new technology has the potential to produce a very large variety of inexpensive technological solutions to the “problem” of increasing pCO2. Not only that, but substantial societal investment in a technology, combined with economies of scale, can potentially bring the cost of technological solutions down by several orders of magnitude.

But there are no guarantees. Any particular line of technological development must remain speculative until appropriate proof-of-concept is available, and even then both the potential for cost reduction, and assumptions regarding how much societal investment will actually be made, remain tentative.

It’s been my observation here that the majority of commentators on both sides of the “raise the price of fossil carbon” issue want to “assume the worst” regarding unrealized technological potentials. That is, they want to exclude from their cost/benefit analyses any technology that isn’t already on-line, and what’s available they want to cost at current rates.

While such an approach might be appropriate for a single line of technological development, the assumption that all the possible lines of development will fail to pan out is totally unwarranted. Suppose you have 1000 possible technological solutions, each with a 1/100 chance of panning out: what’s the chance that none will pan out?

Uncertainty about the problem (man-made climate change) is a given; but uncertainty about the chosen solution is inexcusable. This is to say, we should be confident that our solutions are going to be effective, and the more expensive the solution the more confident we should be. In short, big responses require high levels of confidence that they will work. There seems to be a lack of credible evidence to demonstrate carbon pricing passes this test.

– Concern that policies based on consensus science that are advocated to mitigate global warming, even if implemented, would be ineffective in controlling climate and extreme weather events.”

This one somehow goes right over most warmists’ heads. And of course we can take it a step further, which is that such policies would likely do great economic harm,,, in addition to being ineffective. I think we should invoke the precautionary principle as a restraint on damaging mitigation measures….

Peter, I would add that to the extent climate policies relate to enegy production and consumption, another very real concern is that many have misguidedly adressed the wrong issues, causing a great deal of spending on ‘solutions’ that do not address the most impending problems foreseeable over the next couple of decades. Judith has been kind enough to host a couple of past posts on that.

Mainstream media is slowly being infused with reason, a new awareness about reality courtesy of a growing independent gentlemen and women community of the skeptical AGW science. Official Western prognosticators of global warming doom are left clinging to their weathered altar of gratuitous alarm upon which the free enterprise economy and property of America’s unborn have been sacrificed to quench the fears of the Left.

I think it’s a little early to determine that those in the MSM who are backtracking a little bit are “slowly being infused with reason.” Whether there is learning going on, or it is merely a tactical retreat is still an open question.

Looking back now, at the swarms of scientists making beelines for the UN exits since 2007 and the big crush at the exits that occurred at the end of 2009 with the grand debunking of Mann’s hockey stick and the Yamal tree-ring circus, and the nature trick, it nevertheless will probably be the CRUGate’s ‘Deep Throat’ with the foi2009.pdf disclosures that will mark the ‘Official date’ that AGW died.

That puts us today in the cognitive dissonance phase of global warming that Philip Stott predicted, marked by insult commie dog crapulent b.s., raised to a fever pitch before they’re all dragged down by the stone of dead cold logic. Even this final howling of the AGW Alarmist, Heaven’s Gate Cult of Science-Hot Dogs marks a point in time that everyone sees it’s politically motivated because the science can no longer ignore reality that climate change is natural.

I have been but a dabbler as far as commenting here but have read your blog since its inception. And while I reside near the far edge of the skeptic bell curve, I have to say that I do truly appreciate the efforts you have made at bridging the gap between folks like me and those at the other extreme like Dana Nuccitelli. The popularity of your blog certainly attests to the fact that you are doing something quite right in hosting this site. I especially appreciate the tell-it-like-it-is tone of this piece. Thank you for the bravery and honesty you have exhibited since I was introduced to you via Climategate. Please do keep up the great work.

Thank you for correcting my poor etiquette, genuinely. But ouch with the Dana comparison. I think you’re joking but I’m not sure. I am pretty close to the opposite pole from Dana, though he is IMO far further to the AGW-proponent extreme than I am to the skeptic extreme, though admittedly, probably not by much.

Gosh your right. From reading this I had the opposite impression of him. I looked at other things he wrote and it looks like exactly as you characterize his position. I’m glad your right, I felt like an ass with my condescending post to you. Although most of my posts here are probably pretty embarrassing but it doesn’t seem to stop me HeHe.

Hey ord, can I call you that? Ord, don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s all right. There was a lot going on there: a gender-neutral name, my etiquette faux pas, etc. It can be difficult parsing where someone stands in this scipolitical debate and with Dana working for Big Oil yet railing against it, such dissection can be made all the more difficult. I for one forgive you and I hope others here search their souls and do the same. Godspeed.

Whereas the reports of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warn of a dangerous human effect on climate, NIPCC concludes the human effect is likely to be small relative to natural variability, and whatever small warming is likely to occur will produce benefits as well as costs.

Roy Spencer A Turning Point for the IPCC…and Humanity?

“We are now at the point in the age of global warming hysteria where the IPCC global warming theory has crashed into the hard reality of observations.”

Before global warming can become an economic, social or environmental problem, it first has to be identified by scientific study as a serious hazard for the planet, distinct from natural climate change.

Consensus science denial has several categories.
Economic: The consensus science can’t be right because the economic consequences are unimaginable.
Political: The consensus science can’t be right because all the possible policies will be devastating to the economy.
Scientific: The consensus science can’t be right because CO2 has no significant effect on climate.
Anti-science: The consensus science can’t be right because scientists are just academics in ivory towers writing papers and getting grant money.
Conspiracy: The consensus science can’t be right because it is a too convenient way to get a world government approved.

Economic: The consensus science can’t be right because the economic consequences are unimaginable.
“Because” ? Obvious strawman.

Political: The consensus science can’t be right because all the possible policies will be devastating to the economy.
“Because” ? Another obvious strawman.

Scientific: The consensus science can’t be right because CO2 has no significant effect on climate.
Yet another obvious strawman.

Anti-science: The consensus science can’t be right because scientists are just academics in ivory towers writing papers and getting grant money.
And, yes, another strawman, similar to the point below. Or did you mean anti-corrupt science?

Conspiracy: The consensus science can’t be right because it is a too convenient way to get a world government approved.
A strawman in the sense of being a spectacularly dishonest mischaracterizing of those who note (fail to overlook) the undeniable fact that government both funds alarmism, and stands to benefit from it.

Noone except strawmanning alarmists speak of “conspiracy”.
The point is that the science is suspect because of the vested interest/funding effect issue.

A generous mark for your analysis then, is 0% (if we took your deviousness into account, it would be negative).

What is denied, and what you studiously ignore, is that there is little or no integrity in government climate science overall.

Actual consequences for bureaucrats who implement idiotic CAGW economic policy? This must be sending shivers through the spines of countless apparatchiks though out western progressive governments.

“Tony Abbott puts broom through bureaucracy”

“On his first official day as Prime Minister, Mr Abbott sent shockwaves through the public service, giving marching orders to Andrew Metcalfe, Blair Comley and Don Russell.
…
Mr Comley was heavily linked to Labor’s carbon tax….”

Gary, I knew Russell, always very much a Labor man. Treasury has gone downhill under Ken Henry, another Labor man I knew, and Martin Parkinson, formerly head of Climate Change, who has decided to retire next year. Change was inevitable there. Metcalfe and Comley are closely associated with policies which are anathema to the Coalition. So this is not a wholesale bloodbath, but a pruning of those who are unlikely to work well with implementing the Coalition’s policies in areas where their view is very different from Labor’s. I’d be surprised if the public service is shocked.

That’s right, Faustino. And Parkinson would be in a different position if he was not already on the way out.

And they’re hardly “shockwaves”, given that just three people out of hundreds of thousands have lost their jobs. But I’m guessing that a lot of senior people will not have their contracts renewed as they expire over the next few years. One can hardly feel sorry for them. They mostly earn many multiples of the average wage, and have generous superannuation schemes.

I hope they find someone good for Treasury. It has been badly mismanaged for several years now. Not to mention that Treasurer Joe Hockey is a nice bloke, but not the brightest bulb in the chandelier. The quicker they get Arthur Sinodinos into that job, the better.

I agree 100% with both of you. Another Labor man they have to get rid of, asap, IMO is Peter Harris, Head of the Productivity Commission,

Amongst other stuff ups, hew was head of the Victorian Department responsible for the contracts to build the Victorian Desalination Plant under the previous Labor Government. It was effectively totally under the control of the unions and costs blew out by a factor of two. Victorians will be paying for it long after it’s life is over, whether it produces and water or not. [Victorians: feel free to correct any details; this was written from memory). That is just one of a long list of incompetencies on his CV. A Labor man from start to end! We need much better to head the Productivity Commission!

I am not familiar enough with Australian governmental structure to disagree. In the U.S., the cabinet, secretaries of this and that, go with the old administration. But firing heads of agencies as your first act in office seems more rare. It is the timing, more than the decision, that is surprising here.

Here in the U.S., progressive bureaucrats expect to have a job for life – political tenure if you will. I hope the next conservative president of the U.S., if there ever is one, fires the head of the EPA, and a host of other agencies.

But as far as leaving the bulk of the bureaucracy in place, that is unfortunately the norm here too. Ronald Reagan found out the hard way that you can be as conservative as you want, but getting the permanent progressive government to follow you is extremely difficult. Especially if you don’t have a conservative legislature behind you.

The bureaucracy has become the fourth branch of government in most western democracies. And really, only the legislature can ultimately rein it in. At least here.

I second galileonardo! My route to Climate Etc. (CE) was different. Your willingness to engage at Climate Audit before you launched served CE as my introduction and I was pleased to see CE take off and reach the level of respect that it has today regardless of the persistence of several trolls ;-)

Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns. #8220;This multi-year Pacific Decadal Oscillation ‘cool’ trend can intensify La Niña or diminish El Niño impacts around the Pacific basin,” said Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “The persistence of this large-scale pattern [in 2008] tells us there is much more than an isolated La Niña occurring in the Pacific Ocean.”

Natural, large-scale climate patterns like the PDO and El Niño-La Niña are superimposed on global warming caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases and landscape changes like deforestation. According to Josh Willis, JPL oceanographer and climate scientist, “These natural climate phenomena can sometimes hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the opposite effect of accentuating it.” http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=8703

I cut and paste this often because it is really quite a good summary from NASA of some of the processes going on. The PDO and ENSO are best thought of as a part of a basin wide phenomenon – one which is called the Pacific Decadal Variation or alternatively the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation. Although it does have decadal periodicity – it also has far longer periods of variability. Do not let the name fool you. It is far from a simple harmonic oscillation. It is statistically a non-stationary time series in which climatic means and variances change at non periodic frequencies. It describes a complex dynamical system in which system states shift as a result of internal variability. Small changes in control variables push the system past a tipping point and the system changes state as upwelling, clouds, winds and gyres interact and shift to a new pattern. The Earth’s climate system is highly nonlinear: inputs and outputs are not proportional, change is often episodic and abrupt, rather than slow and gradual and multiple equilibria are the norm.http://www.unige.ch/climate/Publications/Beniston/CC2004.pdf

Here’s a recent high resolution ENSO proxy from Tessa Vance and colleagues – from salt content in a Law Dom ice core. More salt is La Niña. Dry and wet periods refer to Australia.

The results show millennial scale change in the Pacific state. A recent warm mode and a centuries long shift to cool conditions. The states themselves are amplifications of solar forcing – most especially UV/ozone interactions in the polar stratosphere. Think solar downturn and the reemergence of cool conditions.

This leaves us with a bit of a problem. We can roughly remove decadal variability last century – leaving a 0.1 degree C/decade temperature increase – or a 0.125 degree C/decade increase on land. I am inclined to dismiss the importance of land temperature – which is modulated by water availability over land which shifts with ENSO and other – and related – ocean patterns. All of these ocean and atmospheric patterns are ultimately related as it is all just one system. The increasingly important atmospheric metric is tropospheric temperature. This background rate include all other factors. Solar, clouds, volcanoes and atmospheric gases – which seem almost certain (>99%) to dominate recent forcing in some combination. Seriously – clouds seem to be the crunch variable.

BEST, HADCRUT4 and HADSST3 are shown here. Global and SST are intimately related – as in a truely coupled system. Surface temperature varies with water availability as a result of changing lapse rates over land. It doesn’t seem all that important.

The Pacific added to global warming in recent decades – and the mechanism seems to involve changes in cloud cover. By far the dominant factor in recent warming. The Pacific is now cooling the planet – and seems likely to do so for 20 to 40 years.

The problem is longer term variability – this seems very likely to shift from cool to yet cooler at some stage as the solar downturn is amplified through the Pacific especially. The 33 degree C meme is totally wrong. The planet would be some 100 degrees C colder with no greenhouse gases as ice spread across snowball Earth. Snow, ice, clouds and ocean circulation drive all of the many equilibrium states found between glacial and interglacial extremes over the past 2.58 million years. CO2 and water vapour are driven by temperature – at least until recent times – and are part of the complex of feedbacks.

The pause – Walter – is one transitory equilibrium state amongst many possible states in the evolution of Earth’s dynamically complex climate system. The climate is wild as Antasios Tsonis, Wally Broecker and many others have said – but the pause seems politically charged and likely to derail any effective response for mitigating CO2 for another generation at least. The only reason I have ever publicly commented – I am a very private person interested only in my diverse studies in arts, popular culture, environmental management, biogeochemical cycling and natural philosophy – is to remind people as they seem to need it that climate is wild – surprises are likely – and caution is warranted. This – btw – might be regarded as a third way in climate science. A powerful undercurrent that is neither pro nor anti AGW but something else again – but is little understood by the troops on either side of the climate war. As evidenced by the running battles on high or low climate sensitivity.

There are ways forward that would help to build a resilient and truly global but diverse culture this century. Trade and development, communications, open societies, democracy, the rule of law – along with social progress that brings population and environmental pressures under control. Health, education, safe water and sanitation, social and infrastructure resilience, ecosystem restoration and conservation, protection and enhancement of farmlands.

The profound irony here is that the Borg collective cult of AGW groupthink space cadets – the BCCAGWGSC – are unable to understand any of this. For some it removes the certain need for immediate and far reaching economic and social reforms under their autocratic control – and so must be wrong. For others – it is more that they inevitably would look much dumber than the average ‘skeptic’.

“it is getting very difficult to tell who is on which side of the climate debate: virtually all academic climate scientists are within the 97% consensus regarding the infrared emission of the carbon dioxide molecule and the warming effect on the planet. ”

They might all agree.
I might even agree. But how much does CO2 warm the planet, and how much potentially could CO2 warm any planet?

I would say not by very much.
As far as people agreeing, everyone agrees that H20 gas warms the planet earth more than CO2.
I also could agree that H20 gas warms more than CO2 gas.
So we have a ton of H20 gas warming more than 1 ton of CO2 gas.
And also we have far more H20 gas than CO2.

But suppose we had more CO2 gas than H20 gas- say 4 times more-
does the CO2 warm as much as H20 gas?

What about the non-greenhouse gases, do they cause any warming?

So if Earth had same H2O and same amount of CO2, but lacked any N2 and or Oxygen, would earth be as warm as the current Earth.
If CO2 is about .04% and H20 is somewhere around 1/2 to 1 %.
That gives planet with about 1% of Earth planet, which is roughly the same
as Mars atmosphere. The difference is that Mars is mostly CO2 rather than H2O gas.
Or how warm would Mars be at Earth distance from the Sun?

If Mars was at Earth distance, Mars probably would not have it’s polar caps
being comprised of mostly frozen CO2.
Probably wouldn’t have polar caps comprised of frozen CO2- but maybe poles could still freeze out CO2.
So it’s possible or probable that Mars wouldn’t have frozen CO2 and it’s possible one could have bit more CO2 in the atmosphere. It’s also possible one could have more H20 in the atmosphere.
It’s possible that one could have more H20 in the atmosphere AND the current dry air, could be more drier- or more quickly evaporate water.
If so, then it seems to me that poles would still get cold, and poles may be frozen but rather than CO2 and water, it’s just frozen water.

But such things could rather minor to the question, would Mars at Earth distance be a warm as Earth?

It seems the surface would be much hotter than Earth surface. Mars at Earth distance, would have surface temperature similar to the Moon.
The surface of Mars would receive around 1300 watts per square meter
[or more] compared to Earth’s +1000 watts per square meter.
So concrete or sand would heated over a 100 C.
But Mars would like a Earth desert, just more extreme. Noon sand temperature being over 100 C, but at sunset, the sand temperature would be significantly cooler. The sun at angle spreads more of it’s energy over a large area of level surface. So if sun was at an angle where per square one has 1/2 of 1300 watts per square meter, it’s not going to heat surface to over 100 C.
“Figure 2 depicts a sunbeam one mile (1.6 km) wide falling on the ground from directly overhead, and another hitting the ground at a 30° angle. Trigonometry tells us that the sine of a 30° angle is 1/2, whereas the sine of a 90° angle is 1. Therefore, the sunbeam hitting the ground at a 30° angle spreads the same amount of light over twice as much area ”

So each hour on earth [or Mars] the angle of sun travels 15 degrees.
So two hours before sunset, the sun at 30 degrees and one getting about 650 watts per square meter.
So two hours later the surface could nearer to freezing than 100 C.
The once the sun goes down it could start to get quite cold- just like deserts do on Earth, but perhaps much colder.

So Mars at it’s current distance from the Sun, has it’s surface in sunlight
warming to about 26 C [and sunlight is about 600 watts per square meter at noon, and the surface temperature during mars night to about -70 C. So around 100 C swing in temperature.
Largest daily temperature swings on Earth are about 50 C [but we don’t measure surface temperature- we measure surface air temperature- in shade.]
It’s arguable that a Mars at Earth distance at equator, could have temperatures above 100 C during and be 0 C or cooler at night.
If it only cooled to 0 C at night- this gives the average temperature per day of 50 C. So that gets an average temperature about 25 C warmer
than our tropics.
But if this were the case does this have anything to do with “greenhouse effect” or said differently if the planet had complete vacuum the temperature swing and average would be similar.
It isn’t similar tropics on Earth, which maintains a warm temperature- most of Earth tropics at sea level do not come any where near freezing.

Now I think Mars at Earth’s distance from the Sun at equator at night would get much colder than 0 C. I think it would reach 0 C within an hour of sunset, but I think it would warmer than -70 C.
I think would warmer because the ground would hold more heat [in would heat up more during the day as compared to Mars, and I think there could be some warming effect from the CO2 atmosphere [it has more 28 times more CO2 than Earth].
Combining both factors, could result in night time temperature being ten or more C warmer.

But I don’t greenhouse gases would making the Mars at Earth’s distance have a hotter surface than the 1300 watt per square sunlight would cause it to be- it’s not going to make warmer than day time temperature on the Moon. Few try to make the argument that greenhouse increases surface temperature or causes higher daytime temperatures.

Anyways, it seems obvious to me that what is not causing larger swings in tropical temperature is the warmed ocean.
And that if you have 100 C at equator at the day and 0 C cooler at nite, this isn’t a condition associated with strong greenhouse effect.

Thanks WHT, you have inspired me to have a look at the feeds functionalities.

This type of plug-in seems independent of websites

“Here’s an easy code snippet to add to your functions.php or site specific plugin for WordPress file, designed to remove posts from your RSS feeds whenever you want. The code works by adding a new custom field to your post (I love custom fields), and then removing posts with the unique marker from your feeds.

$where .= ‘ AND $wpdb->posts.ID NOT IN ( ‘ . $exclude . ‘)';
}
return $where;
}
add_filter( ‘posts_where’, ‘thisismyurl_post_rss_exclude’, 1, 2 );
view rawremoves-specific-posts-from-the-rss-feed.php hosted with ❤ by GitHub
Now, all you need to do is add a custom field to your post named skiprss (with any value) and that specific post will be skipped from the RSS feed. Huge thanks to the Error: not found. site for the base code to make this happen.

— Christopher Ross”

I will look at this more closely when I get some more time. It seems that WordPress users can customise their feed requests for specific postings and subsequent comment strings.

Reading this blog and the arguments and what at time passes for discussion I get the feeling that not much has changed in this ongoing argument along with all the accusations and invective that is so evident in this debate on catastrophic global warming.
In fact I don’t think much has changed for the last couple of thousands of years in the way this [ heated ] argument is evolving and perhaps for even much longer than that going even further back in mankind’s history.

The language and the terminology might be different and the time frame is compressed from a couple of centuries down to weeks or months thanks to the change from letters and a horse or a man walking pace to the internet but I suspect that the early Christian church went through pretty much the same heated arguments also sprinkled with similar highly inflammatory invective and accusations while it got it’s arguments, policies and doctrines sorted out over those first few centuries of it’s existence.
And history tells us that the religious equivalent of “deniers” were accused even then and were promised hell fire and occasionally were given a dose of real fire for not conforming to the “consensus” as defined by the various activists, believers and assorted free loaders.

Shades of yesterday still in existence today despite all our so called modernity and our reputed but often not evident tolerance for free speech and our so called personal liberties .

When this one is finally and permanently laid to rest and we have all retired to lick our wounds or celebrate a great victory and all is finally at peace so we believe, then in another generation or two there will be yet another pseudo religious cause arising somewhere in human politics using the usual perverted reasoning and the usual pseudo and corrupted cause today usually passed off as science instead of religion, to again strike fear and foreboding into yet another generation of the human race.

Human nature hasn’t changed one bit over those past hundreds of millenniums.
Nor is there any reason why it is likely to start changing over the next few millenniums either.

Can such undisciplined commentary be constrained in such a way that bars repetition, insults, ad homs and that the discussion always centres on finding common ground and on building a consensus between us so that there will be an advancement of the state of the science?

Can there be some form of mediation put in place or will all participants prefer to do what they always have done and expect a different result?

Don’t know if you have ever tried to blow up a large inner tube from say a tractor tyre or some such when the tube is free of the restraints of the tyre.
Every time you try to restrain that bare tube in some way it will pop out somewhere else despite your best efforts and much swearing and will continue to do so until it is again tightly confined within a tyre.

So it is if you try to restrain and hold down freedom of speech and freedom of thought and so many other freedoms that we at least have some semblance of, something often a whole lot nastier will just pop out somewhere else, often in unexpected places and circumstances.[ Syria ?? ]
It might take time as in a generation [ communism, fascism ] but any severe and restrictive constraints imposed from above on the human horde will inevitably rebound,and backfire and the instigators of those nefarious restraints, unless they are smart enough to leave this mortal coil permanently before hand, will be totally discredited if they are very lucky and much, much worse if they aren’t.

And there goes the global warming cause and it’s cabal of increasingly discredited opportunists in all their ragged, shambling, worn out, discredited and increasingly pathetic glory.

Open means robust, not PC …yer can say this but not that.
I meself value courtesy in debate, wit and humour, kim the
non pareil, rather than shout ‘em down, but we have seen
controls – on – who – is – allowed – ter – be – heard and serfs
don’t care fer barriers ter entry.

Can there be some form of mediation put in place or will all participants prefer to do what they always have done and expect a different result?

Nothing external to the participants will constrain what ROM is describing. It will change only if the participants become more interested in discussion than in victory. That comes about when participants see their common interests as being aligned. It is about distinguishing between interests and positions. If the participants have a different orientation, then you can create external structures that foster productive dialog.

Can such undisciplined commentary be constrained in such a way that bars repetition, insults, ad homs and that the discussion always centres on finding common ground and on building a consensus between us so that there will be an advancement of the state of the science? ”

Consenus between us, does not advance science.

Consenus is the continents don’t move. It’s the universe is a unchanging crystal sphere.

The lack of Consenus is good.
Imagine if we had consenus on history- what good is that?
Yes, consenus is needed for religion, and religion has some value,
But having just ONE religion is not so good.
It’s not even good for the priests of the ONE religion.

Joshua. Good comment and it applies to both sides of the debate. The difference between interests and positions seem to be more a matter of ego as to rightness and wrongness. As of now I don’t know if any side can have more claim to rightness than the other as only nature knows the truth.

Gbaike consensus is to me a meeting of minds on specific items of detail rather than on anything broad like religion or philosophy because with anything that is broad of scope, there will always areas of disagreement on particular aspects of any such thing.

In climate and weather, it seems to me that while there is considerable scope for general agreement on the science, it does not seem to have happen. The science seems far from settled and what seems necessary is for many of us to go back to basics and rethink our positions in a non-adversarial way.

The difference between interests and positions seem to be more a matter of ego as to rightness and wrongness.

I think that ego is certainly a big part of it. And the more engaged an individual is in the climate wars, the larger their ego investment – for the most part.

But I think that delimiting the causality with a description of ego investment is too narrow. It has to do with identification, IMO – and while ego is a big part of the “motivation” it is inextricably linked to other social, cultural, and psychological “motivational” influences.

Identification with one side or the idea appears to be tribalism to me Joshua and while this could be said of the pro AGWers (apart from any distinction to be made between luke warmers and alarmists) wouldn’t the disparity of views of sceptics in general would seem to preclude this label being applied to sceptics?

wouldn’t the disparity of views of sceptics in general would seem to preclude this label being applied to sceptics?

It would be a factor, but preclude it? No.

Here’s a brief overview of my perspective on that issue:

First, there is a very strong association between “skepticism” and political beliefs. In that sense, it is strongly associated with “identification.” Once one is identified in a particular way, they have a number of “motivations” to justify that identification, including ego investment.

Second, IMO, while “skeptics” often claim that they are not “monolithic” (and I agree that they aren’t), they often, also, characterize “skeptics” in a monolithic fashion. The net effect that that the determination of the degree of “diversity” is a moving target. In fact, the “diversity” of “skeptics” is a dynamic and changing interaction, IMO. Also, the very vagueness of the definition of the term “skeptic” makes it impossible to determine their diversity. IMO, when people make specific claims about the degree of “diversity” amongst “skeptics,” – without being able to provide validated evidence in support, they are largely only displaying “motivated reasoning.

Third – your argument is based on describing the “diversity” of “skeptics” by way of comparison to the degree of “diversity” amongst “realists.” However, the evaluation of “diversity” among “realists” is subject to the same problems as evaluating the degree of “diversity” among “skeptics.” This, essentially, magnifies the problems I talked about above.

Bottom line? IMO, if you view the behavior of “skeptics” on this board, you will see, essentially, rampant tribalism at many levels. Of course, when I visit a “realist” blog I see the same phenomenon. I have not seen, in my observations, any significant difference in the degree of “tribalism” on either side of the debate. Of course, my own “motivations” certainly make me subject to confirmation bias. To begin to control for that, I’d need to provide validated to you for your feedback. I don’t have such data. But with that caveat, are you saying that you don’t see rampantly tribal behavior here, at WUWT, at Bishop Hill, or other blogs in the “skept-o-sphere?

That said, most “skeptics” are not nearly as “motivated” as “skept-o-shere” participants, and like I said, I think that ego investment is generally proportional to the level of engagement. The “motivation” of political identification as an associated attribute, however, is not so much contingent on the level of engagement, IMO – but more so on the extent of political identification.

“This Article is expressed in such a stupid and senseless manner, that they who attribute it to me, declare by this very circumstance, that they do not perceive under how many falsities this expression labors; nay, they do not understand what is the meaning of the words which they employ. ”

Apparently the IPCC now admit that that they ignored the ‘pause’ in their calculation of sensitivity to CO2 doubling. But they still have to be dragged kicking and screaming to admit the first ‘pause’ between 1940 and 1970, when global temperature actually fell, to admit they ignored that as well..

Now they blame the computer, not the people who pragrammed it. What a feeble excuse+!

‘ O – we are creatures of the light,
of enlightenment.
drawn to the light flickering on the river,
the riffling silver threads disturding its opacity,
drawn to the litter of stars that spark
in the dark abyss of night, to the harvest moon
palpable as globed fruit, forgetting its light’s
reflected from the sun.
‘Shine on, O shine, harvest moon.’
Seeking through science and poetry to probe
the secrets of the heavens and deep abyss,
we yearn for honey from the golden hive,
enlightenment – O

O – we are creatures of darkness spurning light. We are drawn to dark teatimes of the soul and squalid, dank corners of existence in which to hide our shame, our ignoble desires and putrefying flesh steeped in corruption. The pallid flesh shrinks from light as from God’s wrath.

Ours is the outer darkness and the gnashing of teeth and the tearing of claws and the direful wailing of lives abandoned to despair and deceit and corruption. Ours is the long descent into the abyss. Ours is the eschatological promise that brings the crash and thunder of love and civilisations falling in about our heads until we yearn for the quiet, the solace of the grave where we may rot in peace – O

I though it deserved a counter-point Beth. There is such a fine literature of counterpoints. Ginsberg, Jean Genet, Rimbaud, Dostoevsky, Kafka and Céline to name a few.

“As long as we’re young, we manage to find excuses for the stoniest indifference, the most blatant caddishness, we put them down to emotional eccentricity or some sort of romantic inexperience. But later on, when life shows us how much cunning, cruelty, and malice are required just to keep the body at ninety-eight point six, we catch on, we know the scene, we begin to understand how much swinishness it takes to make up a past. Just take a close look at yourself and the degree of rottenness you’ve come to. There’s no mystery about it, no more room for fairy tales; if you’ve lived this long, it’s because you’ve squashed any poetry you had in you.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Well both views are true of us fallible and clever human
beings aren’t they, Chief? Who but us are capable of
malice or wonder at Venus? I’ve been tryin’ ter find yr
Lake Illawara poem. I maintain, despite all, that life’s a
gift and yr seek enlightenment and laugh at yr human
weaknesses … when yer can. ( The chorus in Antigone
pretty well nails it, I’d say. God we even invented grammar!
Beth.

Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits
on a lurgid bee.
Groop, I implore thee,
my foonting turlingdromes,
And hooptiously drangle me
with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee
in the gobberwarts
With my blurglecruncheon,
see if I don’t!”

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning” four of his audience members died of internal haemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council, survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England,in the destruction of the planet Earth.

“Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy. Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders – signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat, and the best way to irritate him is to feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. On no account should you allow a Vogon to read poetry at you.”

“The task ahead, therefore, is to fashion a national climate policy that prepares for and adapts to all dangerous climate events, whenever they occur and of whatever origin.”

So, The Optimal Solar Solution: Stratosphere Solar Collection with agriculture in multi-story electrically lit buildings. Or the sunlight can be piped to the surface in light pipes where it goes into agricultural buildings. Such buildings could be hundreds of level high, supported by internal air pressure, equipped with higher CO2 levels and controlled temperatures.

The result would be freeing almost all the land currently devoted to agriculture to renaturalization or low-density inhabitation, as well as complete independence from climate change impacts.

Plenty of engineering problems to be solved, of course. Problems in the sense of problems on a test you expect to do well on. “It’s not a problem: It’s an opportunity!”

Are You A Consensus Denialist?
You know you are a CONSENSUS DENIALIST
if your instincts immediately tell you:
• the following news-story is a monstrous LIE!
• `cuz the science is WRONG!
• an` the politics is PROGRESSIVE!
• so the story is a CONSPIRACY!
• spread by AGENTS of SOCIALISM!Bonus consensus denialism
• These climate-changes are NO BIG DEAL!

A Washington family opens a hatchery in Hawaii to escape lethal waters.

Carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel emissions had turned seawater in Willapa Bay along Washington’s coast so lethal that slippery young Pacific oysters stopped growing.

“I was afraid for everything we’d built,” Goose Point Oyster Co. founder Dave Nisbet said of the hatchery, which opened last year. “We had to do something. We had to figure this thing out, or we’d be out of business.”

Oysters started dying by the billions along the Northwest coast in 2005, and have been struggling ever since. When scientists cautiously linked the deaths to plummeting ocean pH in 2008 and 2009, few outside the West Coast’s $110 million industry believed it.

By the time scientists confirmed it early last year, the region’s several hundred oyster growers had become a global harbinger — the first tangible sign anywhere in the world that ocean acidification already was walloping marine life and hurting people.

And the world’s earliest victims of shifting ocean chemistry fear humanity still doesn’t get it.

“I don’t care if you think it’s the fault of humans or not,” Nisbet said. “If you want to keep your head in the sand, that’s up to you. But the rest of us need to get it together because we’re not out of the woods yet on this thing.”

“I don’t think that our government is recognizing that ocean acidification exists. I don’t think society understands the impacts it has. They think ocean acidification … no big deal, it’s a huge ocean.”

But the reality is, over the next decade, the world will have to make progress tackling this issue.

“We’re living proof,” Maureene Nisbet said. “If you ignore it, it’s only going to get worse. Plain and simple: It will get worse.”

How many Climate Etc readers score six-for-six as consensus denialists?

Edim, we will score you as a moderate “YES” on #1 and #4 (media-rejection and conspiracy-theorizing), a definite “NO” on #5 (agents-of-socialism), and “DID NOT ANSWER” in #2 ,#3, and #6 (science-denial, ideology-first reasoning, and consequence-denial).

Are you aware of the factors believed to be influencing ocean pH along the PNW coast? One is upwelling currents of cold water. Our knowledge of these is still rather limited. There is also the problem of not being able to differentiate CO2 from the atmosphere from the CO2 in the ocean. In other words, researchers don’t know what is driving the change.

Ask yourself this , if atmospheric CO2 is what is driving the change, why are the waters along the coast of Hawaii not experiencing the same changes in pH as in Oregon and Washington?

And rather than linking to a news article, why don’t you find Richard Feely and get him to comment? He is a believer in ocean acidification and right on campus ( or nearby at the NOAA offices along the ship canal).

Timg56,
Are you sure that the waters around Hawaii are not experiencing the same changes in pH as the water off Oregon and Washington?

Because it could be that the waters off Oregon and Washington have naturally lower pH due to the upwelling cold lower pH water there and it is just a shorter trip to detrimental ocean pH there, while Hawaii has naturally slightly higher pH and ocean acidification hasn’t lowered the pH there enough to be detrimental to oysters.

Fan never expects anyone to check his links. If they did they woud see that there is very often a very weak story to tell.

I live 200 yards from shellfish/oyster fisheries. I supplied Fan with a number of articles on them and could have posted more as I have seen a number of these reports on PH of the oceans when involved in the management of this industry as part of a committee.

Readers will see that there is gigantic natural upwelling of co2 in the area Fan cites. This looks to be the most likely cause of the problem but it needs investigating. I linked him to NOAA and to a committee that is tasked at looking at the matter. I suggested it would make a good topic for an article.

He then ignores the links, ignores the evidence and paints me in a bad light on a sub thread he did not expect me to read.

How about an apology Fan? That’s a sneaky way of going about things.
tonyb

And if people ask themselves why would Big Dave and his hominems why they think this would be generous to speak of more than the half, they may have to conclude that speaking of halves can be generous.

In other words, people may ask themselves what Big Dave and his hominems presume, if those presumptions are warranted, and if the disingenuousness conveyed is justified or not.

Oftentimes, questions of misrepresentation are not really that scientific

Reminds me of Junior’s trick when Tom Curtis showed he misrepresented Marcott’s press release and paper for more red meat:

Tom Curtis,

Roger says “I guess I don’t really know what you are trying to say.”

Well, this is another convenient debating trick. If all else fails when you have been shown to have been wrong, pretend that you don’t understand your opponent (despite them making a very clear and coherent case), and/or trot out “we can agree to disagree”.

Thanks for demonstrating key problems with yet another of Roger’s arguments/posts.

“CO2 in its gaseous state is what is referred to as non-condensing. That means that it does not easily precipitate out of the atmosphere once it is there.”

BS. It is drawn out of the atmosphere so hard and fast that only 1/2 of anthropogenic CO2 pumped into the atmosphere in any one year remains there. No matter how much or how fast we add more CO2 half of it is sunk right the phuck away.

Thank you for helping to spotlight these two crucial points of climate-change science, David Springer!

Truly you are an effective agent against the willful ignorance, motivated numeracy, feeble cycle-science, and ideology-guided cherry-picking, that provide the cognitive foundations of climate-change consensus denialism!

Your link about dying fisheries led me to the Washington family relocating their oyster business to Hawaii because of ocean acidification. This fits in nicely to the discussion here about the carbon cycle, which is currently little understood. As regards the Molluscs relocation I noted this;

‘The Northwest is particularly vulnerable to the problem because it receives naturally upwelling carbon-laden water from deep in the Pacific Ocean’

“I argued that it is getting very difficult to tell who is on which side of the climate debate: virtually all academic climate scientists are within the 97% consensus regarding the infrared emission of the carbon dioxide molecule and the warming effect on the planet. Further, virtually all agree that the planet has been warming, and that humans have had some impact on the climate.”

What if these ‘Ice Age Cometh’ whack jobs are right? Then Science would really be F…ed and we’d all be Neanderthals frozen for posterity. A default position could be, “Hey we got it right the first time it was on the cover of Time.”

Can we finally put an end to the pretty absurd idea that a cold atmosphere with a thermal mass equal to only 3 meter of water can warm the surface and even the deep oceans, while those oceans are separated from an enormous amount of hot magma by a very thin crust.
Every now and then enormous amounts of that magma erupt, warming the oceans (and the rest of the world) out of a period of ice ages.
Most recent one the Ontong Java Plateau, a mere 100.000.000 km^3 of magma warming the oceans some 15-20K.
We have been cooling down since then (~80 million years ago) and there is no sign that this cooling has reversed. (I hope I’m wrong on this one)
Before this eruption much larger ones must have taken place, otherwise we wouldn’t have continents to live on.

Btw the much heralded 255K is way too high. The effective temperature for the moon is 270K (albedo .11), but actual average temperature is only 197K.
The real Effective temperature for Earth is more like 151K.

Are you saying that 100.000.000 km^3 magma erupting into the oceans does nothing to their temperature? That the deep oceans being 17K warmer during the Cretaceous is due to a few extra CO2 molecules in the air and not by this enormous magma eruption?
(this is enough magma to cover the USA + Canada under a ~5 km layer of magma.)

True, Ontong Java was about 100,000,000 cubic kilometers of lava, but it erupted over about 5 million years, so averaged about 20 cubic kilometers each year into an ocean over 1 billion cubic kilometers (I rounded down to make the math easier for you)

So how much did it raise the temperature of the oceans again.

And which continent did this eruption form again?

Good to bring up Ontong Java as it is a natural event that caused a CO2 increase without SUVs, global warming and an anoxic extinction event.

You seem to miss the fact that the DEEP oceans WITHOUT major magma eruptions cool only 1K every ~2million years, due to the ~0,1 W/m^2 heat flow through the crust.
I understand the major thrust of Ontong Java took only 2 million years, so the warming effect is ~18K minus the 1K cooling every 2 million years.
Simple artimetic.
Ontong Java did not create any continents, for that we have to go back much further in time.

The 0,1 W/m^2 geothermal heat flux is enough to warm the oceans 1K every ~5000 years. So over your 5 million years this is enough energy to increase the temperature ~1000K. Of course this isn’t happening, since there is a cooling as well at high latitudes.
So pse do the arithmetic on the Ontong Java eruption again….

Still absurd, you have to compare the 100 mw from geothermal with the 340 W from the sun and there be no warming from geothermal no matter how big the eruptions.
It was the CO2 from the eruptions that warmed the planet and the deep oceans.
1 K over millions of years just can’t be measured. Short term variations make that near impossible.

“Still absurd, you have to compare the 100 mw from geothermal with the 340 W from the sun and there be no warming from geothermal no matter how big the eruptions.
It was the CO2 from the eruptions that warmed the planet and the deep oceans.
1 K over millions of years just can’t be measured. ”
Apparently you are not familiar with the concept of a Thermocline. It effectively shields the deep ocean from the atmosphere, except at high latitudes. ( unless of course climatologist have also invented backconduction)
The cooling rate of the deep oceans can simply be derived from a temperature reconstruction:

~17K over the last ~85 million years => 1K every 5 million years (includes some warming periods)
~7K 50mbp to 35 mbp => 1K every ~2 million years.
This means that the deep oceans on a daily basis gain as much heat from the 100 mW geothermal flux as they lose at high latiudes.
Now pse explain how CO2 can warm the deep oceans some 17K, while the sun can’t warm the oceans below ~200m.

But, I digress. My main point is that nothing stands in the way of a popular theory (e.g. global warming) better than failed forecasts. We are now at the point in the age of global warming hysteria where the IPCC global warming theory has crashed into the hard reality of observations. A few of us are not that surprised, as we always distrusted the level of faith that climate modelers had in their understanding of the causes of climate change.

I continue to suspect that, in the coming years, scientists will increasingly realize that more CO2 in the atmosphere is, on the whole, good for life on Earth. Given that CO2 is necessary for life, and that nature continues to gobble up 50% of the CO2 we produce as fast as we can produce it, I won’t be that surprised when that paradigm shift occurs, either.

“For the last 10-20 years or more, a few of us have been saying that the IPCC has been ignoring the elephant in the room…that the real climate system is simply not as sensitive to CO2 emissions as they claim.”

The “real climate system” is not the troposphere alone Dr. Spencer, nor even the sensible heat portion of the energy in the troposphere, but you well know this. Furthermore, you well know that the vast majority of the energy in the “real climate system” is in the ocean, and that during the past 10-20 years the heat content of this portion of the “real climate system” has increased consistently. Thus, your conflation of tropospheric sensible heat to be the entire “real climate system” is most disappointing and quite a gross and severe exaggeration. You, as a PhD, should be ashamed.

Spencer didn’t say sensible heat was all there was. That’s a straw man. You’d be disappointing if it wasn’t for the fact that since no one expects anything of merit to issue from you no one is disappointed when nothing does.

With no physical understanding available for non reproducible nonequilibrium quasi steady state thermodynamic systems, to which class the terrestrial climate system belongs to, computational modelling is nothing, but pseudoscience.

Whoever dares to deny it, is a crackpot.

A system is reproducible if for any pair of macrostates (A;B) A either always evolves to B or never.

Otherwise Baez did nothing like that, on the contrary. He has replied to a question in admirable detail, explicating all the assumptions behind the purported long atmospheric lifetime of carbon dioxide. You have clearly got stuck in a childish paradigm of climate science as fight for a cause.

Baez is widely known in internet circles for coming up with the Crackpot Index (google it).

Of course Baez provided a good response and it is much the same response as one that I have published myself.

So now that you have a good explanation for CO2 adjustment times, and I certainly hope that you will help stamp out the crackpot views of people like Salby and Humlun when they arise.

Just ask Baez, the cause is good physics, not political agendas. I hope you learned that much. Instead you asked a politically charged question — Why is water vapor emission not considered “hydrogen pollution”?

You are a troll, BP, face it. Keep that up and you will get banned at Azimuth.

“Instead, the CO2 excess in the air will start by decreasing exponentially as CO2 goes into the upper ocean—but then the upper ocean becomes saturated, and stops absorbing so much CO2 from the air. At this point a slower process takes over, as the upper ocean more slowly transfers CO2 to the lower ocean”

However, John Baez is completely wrong as the CO2 in the atmosphere is not in equilibrium with the top of the ocean surface. In fact there is a clear, depth dependent, steady state between dissolved inorganic carbon (CO2 and its buffers) and dissolved organic carbon (resulting from the action of biotic carbon fixation).

The profile of DIC with depth

One <b.cannot apply the equilibrium to a biological steady state. It is biochemistry, not chemistry at work.

The amount of organic carbon in seawater is much smaller than DIC, less than 10% in ocean surface water according to the measured values I found from the net.

The lower temperature at higher depth increases CO2 solubility allowing for accumulation of higher DIC concentration. Also the higher solubility at high latitudes where abyssal water is formed adds to the difference.

The biochemical processes are not fast enough to lead to large deviations from the chemical equilibrium. They are on the contrary important in maintaining the chemical equilibrium through formation of CaCO3 in the surface ocean and sinking of it to higher depths where the higher solubility leads to dissolving of the CaCO3..

Baez is correct in his analysis. Stacking together layers of uptake is a similar abstraction to diffusion through a material. The outcome is that it takes a long time for CO2 to randomly walk down to a permanent sequestering site, and the farther it walks the less impact it can have on the atmospheric concentration.

All of climate science is filled with these elegant models describing stochastic phenomena.

Keep reading Baez’s Azimuth blog, as you will get an appreciation for how mathematical physicists think.

Pekka, you should study a tiny bit of biology before you make such, abiotic, seeping statements.
The total mass of ocean surface living organisms is about 3 GtC, and the annual carbon flux is in the order of 90 GtC. Dead organic matter and faecal matter (macroflocs), drop from the upper 10m and some 10% drop deeper than 100m, with 1% is deposited on the ocean floor.
DOC is more dense than water and falls as ‘marine snow’, and the rate of ‘snow-fall’ depends in the nature of the material, faecal matter has been clocked at 100m day-1.

So DIC is converted to organic carbon by life and sunlight, in the top 10m, the normally process of excretion and death cause ‘marine snow’ to rain down from the surface. This is partially intercepted, and oxidized first by aerobes and then by anaerobes. The high rate of conversion of DIC to DOC, and the very rapid rate that DOC falls into , and actually generates, the hypoxic zone is the reason the upper surface of the ocean is denuded of CO2 and DIC, with respect to the atmosphere and waters below.

The way that the surface waters are denuded of CO2 is best observed in arctic or antarctic waters. Here the cold, dark winter waters come close to chemical equilibrium in the winter and spring to life in the spring,

I knew very well that I didn’t discuss all aspects of the issue. No web comment can do that. This time I decided to concentrate on these factors which are essential for the big picture:

The relative quantities are important even, when they cannot determine everything.

The depth profile of DIC is mainly determined by temperature profile, and cannot be used to draw conclusions on the deviations from equilibrium without an analysis that includes the estimation of the equilibrium value.

Dissolved CO2 in surface water changes when CO2 concentration of the atmosphere changes, DIC is influenced by dissolved CO2. CO2 concentration of the atmosphere varies significantly due to local biological activity both in land areas and in biologically active ocean areas, but the overall trend is similar everywhere in the atmosphere and also in near surface ocean.

“The depth profile of DIC is mainly determined by temperature profile, and cannot be used to draw conclusions on the deviations from equilibrium without an analysis that includes the estimation of the equilibrium value.”

Quite simply bollocks. I know, and you know, that equilibrium has a specific meaning. You know, and I know, that dynamic processes which may appear on first observation to ‘equilibrium’ states can prove to be dynamic steady states. The movements of carbon in the ocean are one such dynamic system.
We know that the sizes of the atmospheric and upper ocean carbon reservoirs are approximately 900 GtC.
We know that at least 90 GtC of inorganic carbon is fixed annually in the top 5m of the oceans.
We know that biotic organic carbon rapidly drops from the surface to lower depths.
We know that this fall of ‘marine snow’ is the most rapid physical movement of bulk carbon in the oceans.
Therefore we know that the majority of the fixed, organic, carbon is transferred from the top of the ocean, where the interface with the atmospheric carbon reservoir is, to depths below 10m.
We know that during its fall the DOC is converted to DIC.
We know that the carbon in the atmosphere is rapidly cycled with the ocean carbon
We know that 14C has a half-time atmospheric residency of <10 years.
We know that the relative size of reservoirs of the oceans and atmosphere THAT ARE IN RAPID EXCHANGE is >20:1. Thus, we know that atmospheric 14CO2 has been exchanged with carbon that was much lower than the surface.
The surface waters, where there is life and sunshine, are denuded of DIC/CO2 and are at disequilibrium with the atmospheric CO2 pool.

Look at the end point of the curve to estimate the ratio of the atmospheric and oceanic reservoir that are in communication in timescales of <10 years.

Doc,
Organic carbon is certainly sinking in oceans, and I did refer to that in my first comment in this exchange with you, but that’s not the issue. The issue is, what determines the DIC levels. Subsiding organic material is not the determining factor as long as there’s enough carbon available to maintain a supply of non-dissolved carbon.

In a stationary state of a dynamic system the concentrations may be close to the equilibrium values or deviate essentially from them depending on specific factors. If some particular step is the limiting one in the series of successive steps that form the dynamic process, the states before and after are modified to drive that step sufficiently. A quantitative analysis is needed to tell where that occurs and how the states are modified.

R Gates “The “real climate system” is not the troposphere alone Dr. Spencer, nor even the sensible heat portion of the energy in the troposphere, but you well know this. Furthermore, you well know that the vast majority of the energy in the “real climate system” is in the ocean”,

The CO2 is in the troposphere. If the troposphere is not heating up [i.e. “CO2 is not working”] how can any extra energy get into the ocean, especially the vast majority of it that you mention, especially if the troposphere has not heated up over 16 years.
It beggars belief that one can talk about missing energy in the deep ocean when there is no mechanism currently heating the surface to get any energy to go deeper.
Which is what you would have to have happening to have CO2 induced global warming occurring in the first place.

You need to understand the climate system a bit better before posting such an incorrect statement. The vast majority of energy in the climate system is in the ocean (by a thousand times or more) and the net heat flow is from ocean to atmosphere. Extra energy does not have to “get into” the ocean, but rather, the flow from ocean to atmosphere simply needs to slow just slightly in order for the atmospheric sensible heat to flatten or cool. Recent data and several studies have shown this is exactly what had been happening over the past 10 to 15 years, mainly as a result of slowing energy flow from the Pacific.

Of course you should add, the vast majority of heat flow from ocean to atmosphere is in the form of latent heat via evaporation. When water vapor condenses later on elsewhere, this latent heat is released to the atmosphere.

However, evaporation is a surface process, it happens in the very micron thick layer which is supposed to be heated by “back radiation” enhanced by increased carbon dioxide levels.

And now, listen carefully, please. If the atmosphere is not warming, flux of latent heat released is not increasing. If flux of latent heat released is not increasing, evaporation is not enhanced. If evaporation is not enhanced, the thin surface layer is not heated more by back radiation. If the thin surface layer is not heated more by back radiation, heat is not “trapped” more efficiently by extra carbon dioxide.

That is, if the atmosphere is not warming, heat is not “trapped” more efficiently by extra carbon dioxide.

How can that be? Simple. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, but not a well mixed one. Its atmospheric distribution is fractal like. Average IR optical thickness of a fractal absorber is not proportional to its average concentration, it can even decrease while the latter is increasing, depending on higher moments of the distribution.

Therefore overall Planck weighted IR optical thickness can remain constant even with a single narrow band well mixed absorber increasing. In this case the “missing heat” is located in interstellar space, travelling away from Earth at the speed of light.

1) No layer is heated by IR, all are cooled, because IR emission from every layer is larger than absorption (or both are zero).
2) Backradiation is increased a little by additional CO2 even for fixed temperature.
3) Added CO2 reduces OLR. Because the heat capacity of the atmosphere is small, most of that reduction manifests itself as more heat being held by ocean.
4) Evaporation and sensible heat transfer must always settle to values consistent with the above.

Pekka, you are cheating again by quoting total flux and not examining the changes in the influx of IR (including that caused by GHG’s) and outgoing IR (thermal).
This naughtiness is rather common when you want to dismiss a legitimate argument and you have no other way of disproving it.
The questions here are simple; does illumination the surface of an ocean with IR lead to an increase in evaporation, surface heating 1cm and what is the ratio of latent/sensible heating for the system?

Thank you Mr Gates.
From your reply I now now you believe the oceans heat the atmosphere not the sun and that Co2 obviously plays no part because the heat is coming from the ocean not from the sun.
For someone who put a lot of graphs up at Neven’s on atmospherics it seems as if you have changed focus immensely.
The sun is the thermostat, it is the source of most of our heat on the earth and in the sea. The sea does not produce the vast amount of the energy in the oceans it comes from the sun.
Btw increasing ocean heat from current arguments is unprovable. If the heat is missing in the deep oceans one can as easily speculate that any measured increase in 700 and 2000 metre depth measurements is coming from heat coming up from the depths not the sun at all and argue that if this heat was not coming out and warming the atmosphere we would now be down to 1960’s atmospheric temps.

“Of course you should add, the vast majority of heat flow from ocean to atmosphere is in the form of latent heat via evaporation.”

—
And of course that’s one reason Pielke Sr. suggests that sensible heat alone is a poor measurement for energy in the atmosphere and that moist enthalpy should be used. When using this metric we see that even the so called “pause” did not happen. But of course the “skeptics” are too busy in their froth to take a look a such considerations.

Runoff from the continents is warmer due to greenhouse gases. In that manner OHC can increase without the energy first passing though the mixed layer of the open ocean. Greenhouse gases over the ocean have little effect. Over land they have the full advertised effect. Water is vastly different from rocks with the greatest difference being that rocks don’t evaporate in response to increased DWLIR like water does.

I won`t live long enough to witness the next great debate on whether there are ample supplies of CO2 in the atmosphere to maintain our crop lands, our forests and yes even our backyard gardens. Spencer and others are hinting that equilibrium will arrive sooner than we think and ROM has pointed out in a previous blog that wheat, our most important crop thrives when CO2 is at 700 parts per million.
As a grandson of an old coal miner it will be nice for others to learn that coal not only gives us affordable electricity but supplies the planet with this wonderful fertilizer, CO2.
Also, I got great joy this past week when I read that the oldest man in America passed away at 112 years. He was a life long coal miner.
Of course people like Joshua will say, “See I told you so. It finally got him.”

That diversity-of-opinion, and the discourse that sustains that diversity, both are necessary to democracy, aren’t they Steven Mosher?

Thanks to the social activism and strict regulative legislation of decades past … activism that triumphed over vehement industry-sponsored consensus denialism … these lung diseases are becoming less widespread.

Like I said FOMD get the hell off his grave and the graves of others. Stop using the pain and misery of others for your twisted agenda. Its sickening and ghoulish. You have no standing whatsoever when it comes to talking about those who died from silicosis related maladies, so kindly shut the hell up

Between the ravages of mining, the ravages of smoking, and the ravages of a decade-long trillion-dollar war fought in oil-rich nations … pretty much every American family has fully earned the right to speak out on “consensus denialism”.

Because weren’t all of these tragedies made far worse by *lack* of open discourse?

Funny that you would think I am angry. pity kills anger. and funny that you think you understand my position on the corporate sponsership of anti scientific positions.

Keep your ghoulish disgusting rhetoric away from my relatives. There are better arguments and you hurt our ability to make changes by your actions. And in case your thinking of going there, keep your sick rhetoric away from my children and grandchilden.

FOMD- Your insights will be passed upstairs…
Ha. Your mockery makes me laugh, so thanks for that. But still not funny re ghoulish exploitation of personal loss. Will you man up and apologize to mosher? i expect no.

Mosher had personalised the debate and FOMD chose to ignore this and to keep making his point. We all have our tradegies but most of us choose to keep them to ourselves and we all have a POV but most of us choose not to overegg the pudding. No cigars I’m afraid.

Mode
“If error and ignorance have forged the chains which bind peoples in oppression, if it is prejudice which perpetuates those chains, science, reason and truth will one day be able to break them”

Reality
The French Revolution led to mass, systematic, industrialized murder thanks to the innovative guillotine. Instead of an executioner being limited to killing 5-7 individuals a day he could kill 10 people an hour. All told, 16,594 people were murdered by guillotine (2,639 in Paris), and another 25,000 summary murdered across France.
The French Revolution led directly to the Napoleonic dictatorship and war across he whole of the world; the first true global war. France lost 1,700,000 men due to the Napoleonic Wars.

When people speak of ‘freeing people’ with ‘science and reason’, they mean to impose on the masses a different form of ignorance.
There is no one ‘truth’ that one can force a population to believe, although many totalitarians have tried. To tie to ‘science’ the indoctrination of he mass of people and the murder of those who refuse to mouth the current, politically correct, slogans, is perverse.
You, John Sidles, are just another second rate Robespierre, and like him you should be consumed by the monster of your own making; you should ignore Thermogeddon and concentrate on Thermidor.

If by control knob you mean to describe the process that CO2 increases hundreds of years after the warming has occurred as reflected in the Ice cores? Can we turn the control knob to 11? My preference is that my great grandchildren 100 times removed not have to try and live in a Chicago buried under 5000 feet of ice.

The correct and ethical response is “Probably not but you are definitely at risk.” In other words, rather than providing a binary yes-or-no answer, an opinion of the probabilities is in order. Anything else hurts the doctor’s trustworthiness, in the long run causing more harm than good.

Your solution is to lie in the interests of a good cause. And now climate scientists, due to the extreme alarmism that they did far too little to challenge, are suffering from a well-deserved loss of credibility with the public.

In the long history of Dr. Curry’s support of the consensus before expressing doubt under sham science “uncertainty” I would just like her to admit at some point she was supporting AGW claim because of her political culture. Which is and to this day largely left-wing in orientation. That would cut to the chase. That would be contrite. Talking about others bias as example is a half-measure at best. She was part of it, knew it, approved it. Vague references to Italian flags are garbage.

It really isn’t that much about “science” and by pretending otherwise she is still supporting the consensus which politically motivated. The consensus is built on a false link to science when it was and is always about a political framework looking as science as an excuse and support. Similar to an abstract forward earnings statement of a speculative company or more accurately a central planner during a time of war explaining the morality of food rationing to the Proletariat. AGW policy is good for you even if it has nothing to do with climate change is the real consensus among the chosen “experts”, Dr. Curry believed this at least once and should admit it now. She continues to frame on decidedly warmist (statist) terms and talking points such as the “pause” which implies validity to AGW claims. As if the “pause” was a minor glitch along the correct way to co2 link and warming truth. More bogus linguistics from a master of them.

So by going on and on about “science” trivia and details she continues to support the AGW movement instead of simply supporting the obvious statements of Dr. Linden and Spencer. It was always left-wing political culture born out of the 60’s and 70’s Green Utopian-ism aligned somewhat with oil shock nationalism of the period domestically and linked with global counter parties (anti-Americanism, U.N., EU, global left). Interlinked were the anti-oil and anti-capitalists parties. In a general way Dr. Curry supported and was part of this culture, even today. Therefore she remains a hazard to the ultimate truth to be learned regarding the AGW movement, how great it cost, the loss of individual rights and the seditious nature to freedom it represented.

If rationing oil was a good policy we could have maintained the gold standard (weak Bretton Woods version at that) and none of the imbalances of oil deficits could have been afforded the past 43 years. This isn’t how it went of course, the currency is fiat and deficits are massive. We don’t need another lie to mitigate our policy choice. AGW is exactly that, a political lie to rationalize a central planning energy policy. Calling it “green” and “saving the world” is just lipstick on the pig.

To further add to your presentation… Dr. Curry is an indoctrinated statist. What looks like a simple scientific conclusion that there just isn’t enough evidence to support AGW, for us, is not the same kind of idea to her. To her, such a statement would also be taking an axe to a lot of other non-science she is devoted to. Difficult, even if she had the desire.

Dr. Curry is a doctrine statist and warmer dressed as something else. She re frames skepticism into manageable chunks for the consensus. The term “the pause” is yet another example of minimization and semantics.

You miss the point Phil, “The Pause” is an idiotic term framed on the correctness of the theory that has never been supported by observational results without the greatest of cherry picking parameters like starting from the end of the Little Ice Age or 1850.

All the historically bogus claims of AGW fanaticism and certainty are ignored and reduced to a sublime and meaningless discussion of “The Pause”. Skeptics who accept these terms of discussion are indeed “useful idiots”. Dr. Curry is the last person on Earth to be trusted with such a language protocol. It sums up everything wrong with the alleged “dialogue” that gains praise from many skeptics.

“The Climate Hypothesis Failure” or TCHF should be substituted when discussing observational results. It really isn’t about the last 17 years at all by the way.

Sorry cwon, I do not miss the point. I just would prefer not to categorize a bunch of people based upon ignorant prejudices. In other words, I can read Steven Mosher and agree with him (or not) and read Dr. Curry and agree with her (or not). I do not label them with silly labels based upon preformed prejudices that have nothing to do with the content of their statements.

‘Finally, the presence of vigorous climate variability presents significant challenges to near-term climate prediction (25, 26), leaving open the possibility of steady or even declining global mean surface temperatures over the next several decades that could present a significant empirical obstacle to the implementation of policies directed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (27). However, global warming could likewise suddenly and without any ostensive cause accelerate due to internal variability. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, the climate system appears wild, and may continue to hold many surprises if pressed.’ http://deepeco.ucsd.edu/~george/publications/09_long-term_variability.pdf

But I can’t possibly be wrong – whatever happens. I suspect that cooling is more likely for the next few decades.

What are skeptics going to do when the warming continues and breaks their expected 30 year cycles? If you expect nature to produce 30 year cycles but the cycles break who else is responsible but man?

BIG “if” there.

But let me turn it around for you:

What are skepticsconsensus believers (like you) going to do when the lack of warming continues and breaks their expectedrepeats the previously observed 30 year cycles? If you expect nature to produce 30 year cycles but the cycles break human emissions to produce steady warming but there is no steady warming despite unabated GHG emissions who else is responsible but mannon-anthropogenic factors?

Summary:

If the pause continues for another decade or two despite unabated human GHG emissions, the hypothesis of significant (or even catastrophic) AGW has essentially been falsified.

If the current pause ends and warming resumes at the same rate we saw in the late 20th century tri-decade, then this could be a partial validation of AGW, although the questions still remain why there was a 30-year statistically indistinguishable warming period in the early 20th C before any significant CO2 emissions and a 30-year pause after that, when CO2 emissions increased rapidly.

There is no statistically robust correlation between GHG concentrations and global average temperature.

Where there is no statistically robust correlation, the case for causation is weak.

Thanks for the graph of updated data Max. Interesting to see what happens next but as the commenter said above, maybe regional temp bands would be more useful than one global temp. That way models could test against acual temperatures. Say model Pacific coast, central valley, midwest, east and see if they match actuals.
Scott

“So what are your suggestions for improving them. Details, please, including the PDEs that need solving.”

You make this comment, or variations of it, regularly, so I thought I would give it a shot.

First, there is an effectively infinite number of claims about something or other that I can confidently say are incorrect without having any idea whatsoever as to what the ‘correct’ answer actually is. Nor do I need to know the correct answer to state confidently that the the answer presented is incorrect. A trivial example would be: Wonder how many grains of sand are on that beach over there? Answer: 2,914,578. My reaction: I have no idea how many grains are actually on the beach, nor do I propose to count them in order to refute your answer. But I am confident that the answer is NOT 2,914,578.

On to climate models and how to improve them.

The first problem with current climate models is that ALL of them were developed for the specific purpose of proving that anthropogenic CO2 was forcing the temperature of the earth (TOE) to rise at an unprecedented rate, that the rise in temperature would have consequences that ranged from unpleasant to catastrophic (nothing good), and that immediate political action needed to be taken by the politicians who funded the climate modelers to control all human activity that generated CO2 as a byproduct. And, in the face of mounting empirical evidence that CO2 has little to no measurable effect on the TOE (see multiple comments by Jim Cripwell point this out), they continue to do so.

So the first, and most important suggestion on improving the models is to stop treating as axiomatic that anthropogenic CO2 is driving the climate in any direction whatsoever. It may in fact have some effect, but outside of the models which treat as axiomatic that atmospheric CO2 is the climate control knob there doesn’t seem to be any strong empirical evidence that the axiom is justified. Change climate models from axiomatic to empirical.

Second, to the extent possible, make an exhaustive list of those factors which we know or suspect, through correlation, have effects on the climate and attempt to learn HOW they effect climate and incorporate them into the models to the extent possible. Eamples would be variations in the output of the sun, including TSI AND the spectral distribution of the TSI, sun spots, which are apparently fairly highly correlated with variations in the climate but with it not being understood exactly HOW sunspots affect the climate or whether they are correlated without being causal. Other factors that are KNOWN to affect climate directly or indirectly by influencing such things as ocean currents include cosmic rays (cloud formation), volcanos, undersea heat sources of various types which heat the ocean directly and as intense point sources of heat can affect ocean currents and, by extension, climate, land use effects, urban heat islands affecting wind patterns as well as biasing TOE measurements, and on and on. The above is not exhaustive, nor did I intend it to be.

I am not a climate scientist, but I DO know that there is a LARGE number of factors which affect the earth’s climate and for all I know, CO2 MAY be one of them. Convince me via some mechanism other than ex cathedra proclamations that the science is settled and that the only dissenters from the catastrophic CO2 litany are shills paid by fossil fuel magnates. I’m paid by the government and the flow of funds between me and the fossil fuel companies is exclusively from me to them. I got to be skeptical all by myself.

Sea level is apparently important. So important that not only have we developed the capability of measuring changes in it at rates of one or so mm/year, but are able to attribute the changes to (again) anthropogenic CO2. Really? 1 mm of ocean rise amounts to around 360 km^3. We know that the volume of the ocean is affected by silt runoff from the land, various sources of exhalations by Mother Gaia that occur under the sea, out of our view, water extracted from aquifers and dumped into streams, hence to the oceans, plate tectonics changing the shape of the ocean floors, a steady fall of dead plankton and other marine life, who knows what else, and thermal effects. Ignoring all other factors affecting the volume of the ocean and, by extension sea level, a change in the average temperature of the ocean of around 17e-4 degrees would account for ALL of the sea level rise. Can we measure all the factors affecting the volume of the ocean, including its average temperature, apportion them between natural and temperature variations driven by anthropogenic CO2, determine that the portion driven by anthropogenic CO2 will prove catastrophic unless political action is taken to ameliorate it, prescribe the policies to be enacted, and have a great deal of confidence in the efficacy of the policies? I have seen nothing here or anywhere else to make me believe that we can. Until someone can convincingly demonstrate that they DO understand all the factors driving the climate, sea level, arctic ice, or whatever they are attempting to control (for the most part, so far, using the tax code), color me ‘skeptical’. Or, if it makes you feel more virtuous, a ‘denier’.

My personal opinion, after reading from a variety of sources and in particular this blog hosted by Dr. Curry, is that there is a LARGE number of factors which affect climate, however defined, that anthropogenic CO2 is not one of the important ones, and that the really important ones, which we may or may not be able to list, are random and unpredictable, rendering the long term climate models which MUST incorporate them effectively useless. Do I believe ANY climate model which claims to be able to predict the changes in the TOE over the next 50-100 years, along with lists of the consequences of those changes and the financial and societal impacts of the changes, and that the climate experts not only understand how the climate will behave centuries or millennia in the future but what actions can be taken by politicians today to ‘tweak’ the future climate? In a word, no.

Several other posters have said much the same thing as the above, usually much more concisely. My apologies for not going back through the posts and giving them credit.

So yeah you reveal your huge bias when you try and paint the opposite picture. You are struggling too hard to deny the role of CO2 and find other excuses to explain the warming. To do that, among other tricks, you apply special tests to CO2 that you don’t apply to other causes.

Honesty would mean accepting the strong evidence that CO2 is the dominant driver of temperature of the earth in the modern era.

Do not misquote me or twist what I say. I have chosen to not comment on your own misstatements related to matters scientific because they are so frequent, that’s all I’d be doing. But if you start purposely twisting what I say, I will make your life on this blog quite intolerable. Currently I will presume you simply don’t know enough science to know exactly what it is I’m talking about.

I love it when progressives let their facade slip and you see the arrogant thug underneath. Recently we have Mosher and religious bigotry. Fan using the communist Chinese and fascist Russian Federation house rags as primary sources. And now R. Gates, the wanna be blog bully.

You are a self important loser who has no power at all back up such silly, jackass, pompous and deluded claims about making life on a blog intolerable for anyone.”

—–
If someone twists or flat out lies about what I say, then I most certainly do. In your case, your repeated fabrication about 1998 being the peak year for ocean heat content was met with my constant correction of this misstatement, so that you eventually had to back pedal, and try to hide your gross feabrication through a smoke screen of you characteristic rabid cut and past posting of irrelevant nonsense…or retreat into your Vogon poetry.

please note that Lucia is on the author list. Maybe you missed the days when she was first starting to compare models to observations.. maybe you missed that here work was vital to the definition of what it means to be a Lukewarmer.

My position on models and observations is pretty clear.
back in 2008 I was arguing that the observations indicated that the sensitivity of models might be too high.

From my perspective there are two forms of idiocy: absolute trust in models and absolute rejection.

Don Monfort | September 18, 2013 at 4:50 pm |
I think the models are very useful. Since we now know how much they are biased towards projecting warming, we can use their output to reassure ourselves that we don’t really have much to worry about.

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yes, Im surprised more people dont get how even bad models are useful. It really depends on the question you are asking and the specific purpose you have in mind. Its also the case that two different people with different objectives and use the same model to different ends.

people persist in dreaming that there are these things called ‘objective facts” that once recognized will dictate a course of action.

One could for example, look at the same ‘over warm” models and conclude that it presented a good guard rail. namely, the models predict 3C of warming, we know that may be a bit warm, but a good engineer always likes a little cushion. So, we might argue that 3C is going to be high, but we should use it for planning anyway.

Interesting report on water and electricity and climate. After reading this report I think we should convert the XL pipeline to pump water down to feed our power plants. What good is coal, gas and nuclear energy if we don’t have enough water to boil AND supply water to agriculture, manufacturing and civilian use?
Synapse Energy Economics:
“Currently, 97 percent of the nation’s electricity comes from thermoelectric or hydroelectric generators, which rely on vast quantities of water to produce electricity … Water is increasingly becoming a limiting factor on U.S. energy production and a key obstacle to maintaining both electricity output and public health and safety. The constraints range from insufficient water supplies to meet power plants’ cooling and pollution control needs—a challenge likely to be exacerbated by climate change, population growth, and competition from other sectors—to the high costs of energy-related water contamination and thermal pollution.”

Key report conclusions include the following:

Thermoelectric plants withdraw 41 percent of the nation’s fresh water—more than any other sector.
The amount of water available to serve diverse needs is a growing concern across the country, from the arid western states to the seemingly water-rich Southeast. Thermoelectric generation compounds the stress already faced by numerous watersheds and adds additional risk for the future. If current trends continue, water supplies will simply be unable to keep up with our growing demands. Factors that are likely to exacerbate the problem include climate change, water shortages, and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). For example, CCS is projected to increase water consumption rates for existing coal plants by 83 percent and natural gas plants by 91 percent. Failure to address these constraints now is bound to lead to further intersectoral conflicts and forced plant shutdowns that will jeopardize electricity production and constrain economic growth in the future.
On an average day, water withdrawals across the nation amount to an estimated 85 billion gallons for coal plants, 45 billion gallons for nuclear plants, and 7 billion gallons for natural gas plants. Additional water is required to extract, process, transport, and store fuel, and this water is often degraded in the process.
Coal mining consumes between 70 million and 260 million gallons of water per day.
Natural gas fracking requires between two and six million gallons of water per well for injection purposes.

Unfortunately, both geology and history show us that the idea of a stable climate is untenable; there has never been, and never will be, a stable climate under human control. All we can do is adapt to constant change.

Our current obsession with the single factor of carbon dioxide emissions is little different. In a system as complex and chaotic as climate, actions with just one factor out of the thousands involved may even trigger unexpected consequences. It is vital to remember that, for such a coupled, non-linear, chaotic system, not doing something (i.e., not emitting gases) is as unpredictable as doing something (i.e., emitting gases). Even if we closed down every factory, crushed every car and aeroplane, turned off all energy production, and threw 4 billion people worldwide out of work, climate would still change, and often dramatically. Unfortunately, we would all be too poor to do anything about it. (Philip Stott)

Right Lolywot. Human emmissions that contribute 3% to the total volume of atmospheric CO2 in a massively complex, chaotic, non-linear, coupled system is absolutely catastrophic. You are the poster child for indoctrincated, lobotimized fools.

‘The climate system has jumped from one mode of operation to another in the past. We are trying to understand how the earth’s climate system is engineered, so we can understand what it takes to trigger mode switches. Until we do, we cannot make good predictions about future climate change… Over the last several hundred thousand years, climate change has come mainly in discrete jumps that appear to be related to changes in the mode of thermohaline circulation.’

‘Large, abrupt climate changes have repeatedly affected much or all of the earth, locally reaching as much as 10°C change in 10 years. Available evidence suggests that abrupt climate changes are not only possible but likely in the future, potentially with large impacts on ecosystems and societies. This report is an attempt to describe what is known about abrupt climate changes and their impacts, based on paleoclimate proxies, historical observations, and modeling. The report does not focus on large, abrupt causes—nuclear wars or giant meteorite impacts—but rather on the surprising
new findings that abrupt climate change can occur when gradual causes push the earth system across a threshold. Just as the slowly increasing pressure of a finger eventually flips a switch and turns on a light, the slow effects of drifting continents or wobbling orbits or changing atmospheric composition may “switch” the climate to a new state. And, just as a moving hand is more likely than a stationary one to encounter and flip a switch, faster earth-system changes—whether natural or human-caused—
are likely to increase the probability of encountering a threshold that triggers a still faster climate shift…

Researchers first became intrigued by abrupt climate change when they discovered striking evidence of large,abrupt, and widespread changes preserved in paleoclimatic archives. Interpretation of such proxy records of climate—for example, using tree rings to judge occurrence of droughts or gas bubbles in ice cores to study the atmosphere at the time the bubbles were trapped—is a well-established science that has grown much in recent years. This chapter summarizes techniques for studying paleoclimate and highlights research results. The chapter concludes with examples of modern climate change and techniques for observing it. Modern climate records include abrupt changes that are smaller and briefer than in paleoclimate records but show that abrupt climate change is not restricted to the distant past.’ http://download.nap.edu/cart/download.cgi?&record_id=10136

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What happened in the years 1976/77 and 1998/99 in the Pacific was so unusual that scientists spoke of abrupt climate changes. They referred to a sudden warming of the tropical Pacific in the mid-1970s and rapid cooling in the late 1990s. Both events turned the world’s climate topsy-turvy and are clearly reflected in the average temperature of Earth. Today we know that the cause is the interaction between ocean and atmosphere.’ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130822105042.htm

C02 and other GHGs including water vapor reduce the rate of cooling of the planet. They do this by raising the ERL.
back radiation is an EFFECT of GHGs being in the atmosphere, it is not the cause of the lowered rate of cooling.

Next I suppose you will want to deny that H2O is a GHG.

Second, you cannot test the GHG effect in a lab because the effect depends upon the entire atmospheric column. This is why climate science is not a lab science, but rather an observational science.

Dry Ice costs $60-80/Ton
The Arizona Meteor Crater has a volume of 6.2693*10^10Liters.
To raise the concentration from 400 to 4,000 ppm would take 271 tones of dry ice.
If you cannot record an effect at 4000 ppm during the day/night cycle, the there is not a lot of effect.

Just because you don’t design experiments, doesn’t mean they cannot be imagined.

I think you are wondering about the effect on CO2 of the energy that the Earth radiates. CO2 is just a trace gas – water vapor is the big player – nonetheless, CO2 also absorbs radiation emanating from the Earth’s surface and then emits radiation in all directions; and, accordingly some of it is radiated back to earth—i.e., the “greenhouse effect.”

Insidiously, the National Park Service website is not totally infected with Leftist propaganda about global warming–e.g.,

As this principal greenhouse gas has increased, it has caused global average temperatures to rise. Projections indicate these increases will continue, causing further changes in global climate, with negative implications for vegetation, wildlife, oceans, water resources, and human populations. Emissions reduction—the limiting of CO2 and other greenhouse gas production from human activity—is an important step in addressing climate change. There are many simple actions agencies and individuals can take to reduce our daily carbon emissions.

A good example of, YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK SUBVERTING REASON, SCIENCE AND THE AMERICAN WAY.

You said:
” And I thought that political empowerment, civil rights, representative governments, access to education, access to healthcare, civic society, democratic institutions, freedom, etc., are all crucial elements in the lifeblood of the global economy.”

I don’t know about the global economy, but if you thinks that’s how the US rose to superiority, you are sadly mistaken. This country rose head and shoulders above the others due to capitalism, free markets, and greed. Now, I’ve said many times there can be problems with this system left completely unbridled. Hayek is a good guide for the middle way.

I don’t know about the global economy, but if you thinks that’s how the US rose to superiority, you are sadly mistaken. This country rose head and shoulders above the others due to capitalism, free markets, and greed.

I disagree with your assessment that factors such as political empowerment, democratic institutions, public education (not to mention taxation and federal spending) were significant factors in the U.S. attaining economic preeminence – but even assuming your argument to be correct, it is largely irrelevant to my comment, unless you are stuck in a binary mentality.

As for what is relevant from a global perspective, I suggest reading Amarta Sen.

Regardless – there are factors that are essential for the functioning of orderly markets – which is what brings prosperity. Achieving those social goals within optimal (for growth) government budgets of about 25% of GDP is something the US government has long since abrogated.

BTW there are things for which the costs are far too high regardless of the benefits.

‘The old climate framework failed because it would have imposed substantial costs associated with climate mitigation policies on developed nations today in exchange for climate benefits far off in the future — benefits whose attributes, magnitude, timing, and distribution are not knowable with certainty. Since they risked slowing economic growth in many emerging economies, efforts to extend the Kyoto-style UNFCCC framework to developing nations predictably deadlocked as well.’ http://thebreakthrough.org/archive/climate_pragmatism_innovation

There is an urban myth that Tom Lehrer gave up political satire when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
Now the field of Climate Science has jumped the shark and climate realism is shown to be the belief of wishful thinking, in silico generated pretty pictures over observation.

Human and natural influences on the changing thermal structure of the atmosphere

US rose to superiority… due to capitalism, free markets, and greed.
Agreed, but let’s face it, Geography had something to do with it, too. The US had access to natural resources. Two big oceans played a part protecting us from the destruction wrought by war.

You misunderstand. I agreed with you, especially with the capitalism and greed part. But just how free were the markets played in by John D. Rockefeller, Vanderbuilt, Carnegie, and Morgan?

Likewise, I don’t know I’d call China today a free market. But it is certainly employing greed with a dose of crony capitalism. On the otherhand, the USSR did well enough with its natural resources while eschewing capitalism and free markets and keeping greed tightly controlled.

Command economies have theoretical performance advantages over capitalism. But only if the correct decisions are made. It is when bad decisions are made, and they will be made!, that disaster runs deep and long and fester. Capitalism makes lots of mistakes, but it is self healing as a system.

jim2, you can also go back to Amsterdam, London, Portugal, Italy, as well as Hong Kong. All took advantage of geography, mostly in the form of a commercial navy to trade.

But frankly, my main point about geography was at the end of 1945, the USA was geographically fortunate not to have had its centers of industrial production and worker talent destroyed by war. That fortune was accidental and taken for granted.

Many of the early capitalists rose from lower stations in life. So, it was free for them and anyone else to prosper. They were the guys that came out on top. I am not arguing with you so much as refining. Anyway, yes, after they rose to the top, they were ruthless in use of their power. So, in the final analysis, there is a role for government and I like Hayek’s and, more generally, the Austrian school of thought.

I found your explanation of the way you perceive sceptics and their behaviour to be worth putting to the end of this thread. It deserves serious consideration but with the proviso that pro AGWers also exhibit some of these characteristics.

“First, there is a very strong association between “skepticism” and political beliefs. In that sense, it is strongly associated with “identification.” Once one is identified in a particular way, they have a number of “motivations” to justify that identification, including ego investment.

Second, IMO, while “skeptics” often claim that they are not “monolithic” (and I agree that they aren’t), they often, also, characterize “skeptics” in a monolithic fashion. The net effect that that the determination of the degree of “diversity” is a moving target. In fact, the “diversity” of “skeptics” is a dynamic and changing interaction, IMO. Also, the very vagueness of the definition of the term “skeptic” makes it impossible to determine their diversity. IMO, when people make specific claims about the degree of “diversity” amongst “skeptics,” – without being able to provide validated evidence in support, they are largely only displaying “motivated reasoning.

Third – your argument is based on describing the “diversity” of “skeptics” by way of comparison to the degree of “diversity” amongst “realists.” However, the evaluation of “diversity” among “realists” is subject to the same problems as evaluating the degree of “diversity” among “skeptics.” This, essentially, magnifies the problems I talked about above.

Bottom line? IMO, if you view the behavior of “skeptics” on this board, you will see, essentially, rampant tribalism at many levels. Of course, when I visit a “realist” blog I see the same phenomenon. I have not seen, in my observations, any significant difference in the degree of “tribalism” on either side of the debate. Of course, my own “motivations” certainly make me subject to confirmation bias. To begin to control for that, I’d need to provide validated to you for your feedback. I don’t have such data. But with that caveat, are you saying that you don’t see rampantly tribal behavior here, at WUWT, at Bishop Hill, or other blogs in the “skept-o-sphere?

That said, most “skeptics” are not nearly as “motivated” as “skept-o-shere” participants, and like I said, I think that ego investment is generally proportional to the level of engagement. The “motivation” of political identification as an associated attribute, however, is not so much contingent on the level of engagement, IMO – but more so on the extent of political identification.”

I pondered over Peter’s ‘realist’, because I’ve come to consider the skeptics, en masse, the realists; they really are a converging consensus, accepting and wondering at the effect of AnthroGHGs, but doubting catastrophic effect. So I would reverse his meaning for the word; the split should be modelist/realist.
=======================

The characteristics are those of humans, not “skeptics” or “realists.” They are the outgrowth of attributes in how we reason (pattern recognition, confirmation bias, etc.). This is particularly true when we’re talking about controversies that overlap with political, social, cultural, or psychological identifications.

IMO – anyone who claims that there is some “asymmetry” with respect to the tribalism on display in the climate wars is simply, and unscientifically, dismissing phenomena for which there is a large body of evidence (and on top of that, they’re dismissing, IMO, what is just plain common sense to anyone who is reflective about how they engage with people who have opposing viewpoints, whether it be in a political context or even more commonplace contexts such as disagreements with family members).

From – Michael Ghil (2013) – A Mathematical Theory of Climate Sensitivity or, How to Deal With Both Anthropogenic Forcing and Natural Variability?

Now we need 1000′s of times more computing power to find out what the question is.

The politics and economics are asymmetric. One side seeks to transform economics and society – more social and economic controls, lower or even negative economic growth, bigger government and more regulation and central planning.

The other side wants optimal and effective government, more freedoms, less central planning and more economic growth.

The strawmen are no government and total government. But it seems that the BCCAGWSC lean more toward total government than economic and scientific rationalists lean towards no government. Hence the asymmetry.

What is the definition of a “skeptic.” Someone who demands a careful look before drawing conclusions? Someone who works diligently to control for uncertainties? Someone who is unrelenting in their diligence in defining terms precisely? Someone who carefully controls for any chance of over-generalization? Someone who fastidiously inspects his/her own conclusions for any glimmer of confirmation bias?

You see that Chief writes something like he just wrote, and yet identifies as “skeptic.” In fact, he likes to boast of his prestige amongst “skeptics” by virtue of being honored by the (obviously non-partisan) “skeptic,” Inhofe.

How can we even approach describing “skeptics” when someone who is so regularly and remarkably unskeptical as Chief dons the mantle?

The other side wants optimal and effective government, more freedoms, less central planning and more economic growth.

You really got me pegged,Chief. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s optimal and efficient government, more freedom, and more economic growth. I so wish I could be on the other side, you know, with the non-elitists like you.

And if there’s one thing that last couple of hundred years have shown, it’s that as centralized planning has grown in those socialist counties like the U.S., Norway, Finland, Japan, and Singapore, economic prosperity is completely tanked.

If only everyone could live in libertarian Utopias like Somalia, they’d realize the crushing impact of centralized planning

I wonder how many people really care how you define/malign “skeptics”, joshie. You are just an insignificant little putz incessantly yammering away on a climate blog that you don’t seem to like. Get a life.

I don’t identify as a skeptic. I should have thought that abundantly clear from the first line if not from much else. I am – as I have said – a climate catastrophist in the sense of Rene Thom.

And reflexively Joshua pulls out the no government strawman.

A broad role for government is accepted as a neccessity.

‘Keynes did note, however, that Hayek, by admitting to the need for government to serve a social function, recognized that there was in fact need for a middle ground, but could not determine where to draw it.’

It is – in Hayeks thought – drawn politically and socially. But there are essential limits and roles. Limits to the size of government for maximum economic growth is one that was accepted by both Hayek and Keynes and ever since in economic theory.

The differences between this and the economics of the BCCAGWSC’s are evident everywhere and in no wise addressed by Joshua’s denials. I in no way addressed it specifically at Joshua – but if he wants to take it on board that is his business. The economics and the politics are radically different demonstrably – and there is only one rational side to this.

BTW – I am pretty sure I referred to being one of Inhofe’s 400 as being my 15 minutes of infamy. Josh is as usual disingenuous in the extreme.

What objective criteria might be used to distinguish Chief from “skeptics?”

Does he regularly insult people who differ with his views on climate change? Check.

Does he frequently rail against “progressives?” Check.

Does he talk of some cabal of alarmists who are seeking to destroy freedom and capitalism? Check.

Should we have raging arguments, as with Muller, where folks on two sides bicker about whether Chief is a “skeptic” when no one first bothers to define the term? Could there be a better example of motivated reasoning than the complete reversal both sides did with respect to determining whether Muller is a “skeptic?”

How about that Chief claims that he doesn’t identify as a “skeptic” yet frequently places himself within the group of “skeptics” with his use of “we” and “us?”

The term is dynamic. It changes with context. It changes from minute to minute. As such, how could we describe “skeptics” as a group? How could we quantify the group’s degree of diversity?

Like Chief’s approach to uncertainty, his identity in relation to the a group called “skeptics” changes from minute to minute. Both his identification and the identify of the group of “skeptics” is completely subjective, not calibrated to anything that is stable or fixed.

You have a point any point at all Joshua? I am a bit banged up and keeping off my foot. So I am reading too much of you for my own good. But haven’t I always said I read perhaps 1 in 20 of your comments? I find you to be a gasbag, trivial, tedious in the extreme, the grand champion of repeating the same whines and complaints endlessly. Mostly I don’t even read the whole comment. That would be a waste of my time.

I and many others – including Mojib Latif – have made the point that non-warming – or even cooling – is more likely than not over a decade or so more.

The pause – Joshua – is one transitory equilibrium state amongst many possible states in the evolution of Earth’s dynamically complex climate system. The climate is wild as Antasios Tsonis, Wally Broecker and many others have said – but the pause seems politically charged and likely to derail any effective response for mitigating CO2 for another generation at least. The only reason I have ever publicly commented – I am a very private person interested only in my diverse studies in arts, popular culture, environmental management, biogeochemical cycling and natural philosophy – is to remind people as they seem to need it that climate is wild – surprises are likely – and caution is warranted. This – btw – might be regarded as a third way in climate science. A powerful undercurrent that is neither pro nor anti AGW but something else again – but is little understood by the troops on either side of the climate war. As evidenced by the running battles on high or low climate sensitivity.

Chief is IMO a human being cast in a true Australian mold. He and Tomas Milanovic have always impressed me with what I consider to be the most realistic portrayal of climate change and how best to analyse it. Chief, however, explains things in a language that I understand and this makes him more important to me in my quest for the truth about AGW.

He gives as good as he gets and while I don’t like ad homs or insults from anyone, Chief’s ad homs and insults are in accordance with Judith’s suggestion that if they have to be done at all then at least it should be done with style.

He, like you Joshua, is good at rhetoric and it is easy to quote various sentences outside of their proper context to make a point. I would prefer everything that is said to be written in sand, so to speak, so that we can weigh in with our POV’s without constantly looking over one’s shoulder about being “consistent” with what we may have said in the heats of moments in the past.

” I find you to be a gasbag, trivial, tedious in the extreme, the grand champion of repeating the same whines and complaints endlessly. “

As if what the Chief writes over and over is no different than the gang markings that appear as graffiti on buildings or rail cars. Every single rail car has to have Chief’s meaningless scribble on it.

Chief is just marking his territory like a dog or a romper stomper or a gang banger.

Yep – we are in a cool global mode – these last 20 to 40 years – the world has cooled post the 1998/2001 climate shift – we will get cooler to 2000 as the Schwabe cycle moves to a minimum and the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation intensifies – to a high degree of certainty (99%).

The regimes say so – the initialised models say so – common sense says so. Would you expect 100 years of data – and 1000 years of proxies – to suddenly do something other than what it has been doing for a 100 years? That may be a theoretical possibility in a chaotic system but it is more of a long shot than odds on.

‘While the correlation displays decadal-scale variability similar to changes in the Interdecadal Pacific oscillation (IPO), the LDSSS record suggests rainfall in the modern instrumental era (1910–2009 ad) is below the long-term average. In addition, recent rainfall declines in some regions of eastern and southeastern Australia appear to be mirrored by a downward trend in the LDSSS record, suggesting current rainfall regimes are unusual though not unknown over the last millennium.’ http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00003.1

What this says is that the Pacific exhibits the robust decadal variability of the IPO – but also centennial scale variability in ENSO frequency and intensity.

You seem to have the delusion Joshua that everyone hangs on your every word. There is more than a suggestion of morbid irony in this – the more people affirm that they generally avoid you the more you claim that they are lying. There are a few people I don’t read much – you and webby are two. An utterly pointless waste of time. Both of you have only versions of the sane whine over and over.

Got used to the idea that Weins displacement changes the peak emission by 20nm with a 1 degree change in temps.

How about the freaking out there idea that CO2 from combustion cools in the atmosphere. Gee I wonder what that does to the freakin’ energy budget. Shh – don’t tell the BCCAGWSC’s that you’re thinking about stuff.

You know of course that the world is not warming for a decade or 3 hence – at least? No I don’t suppose you do. You have problems with nonstationry, nonequilibrium and nonlinear. Anything with a non in it seems. Which is surprising – as you’re a complete nong.

“Yep – we are in a cool global mode – these last 20 to 40 years – the world has cooled post the 1998/2001 climate shift – we will get cooler to 2000 as the Schwabe cycle moves to a minimum and the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation intensifies – to a high degree of certainty (99%).”

——-
Here’s the danger of being so certain of what is going to happen with the climate- instead of simply observing and looking for things that might prove your ideas wrong– you display confirmation bias and only look for things that prove you right. And in doing so, you brome myopic, as all those who would gather round the thimble of tropospheric energy relative to a large swimming pool full of ocean heat and squawk about that thimble no longer warming, will the swimming pool has continually warmed onba decadal basis since 1970.

The list of characteristics of the social aspects of consensus denial is interesting, yet too polite. Take for example “denial of the trustworthiness of the experts”. Is that a euphemism which covers the full range of corruption involved?

The point of the CAGW story is to induce a change. You can’t sell a change that is bad news for individuals by appealing to reason, so you have to induce fear and panic. Until they stop inciting panic, we will never be able to use reason to convince the masses, unless we can convince the masses that they are being manipulated.

Do you doubt the Great God of the interweb? You will be cast forth with all the missing bytes and bits to linger amongst the febrile ghosts of the machine and conjure up infinitely regressive, mise en abyme images of smoke and mirrors.

I still have bookcases of laboriously copied papers in magazine holders. Months? Years? I am at long last about to throw them into the recycling.

Excuse me for not defining “the masses” as “those whose only source of information is the mass media”. I feel sorry for them; I do not despise them. As for the CAGW equivalents to those such as Bernie Madoff…

Why waste a good apocalypse? Which is more fragile, the climate or civilization? Model this:

Due to their excellent understanding of the regional topography and bison behaviour, native people hunted bison by stampeding them over a precipice. They then carved up the carcasses and dragged the pieces to be butchered and processed in the butchering camp set up on the flats beyond the cliffs.

BTW, “Head-Smashed-In” does not refer to the fate of the thousands of bison that met their end there, but to an unfortunate mishap, when one of the natives got too close to the action and got his head smashed in.

“The 60-year-old method for calculating scattering amplitudes — a major innovation at the time — was pioneered by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. He sketched line drawings of all the ways a scattering process could occur and then summed the likelihoods of the different drawings. The simplest Feynman diagrams look like trees: The particles involved in a collision come together like roots, and the particles that result shoot out like branches. More complicated diagrams have loops, where colliding particles turn into unobservable “virtual particles” that interact with each other before branching out as real final products. There are diagrams with one loop, two loops, three loops and so on — increasingly baroque iterations of the scattering process that contribute progressively less to its total amplitude. Virtual particles are never observed in nature, but they were considered mathematically necessary for unitarity — the requirement that probabilities sum to one.”

In the view of many physicists, the 21st century’s new “Feynman” is the Institute for Advanced Study newest professor, young Nima Arkani-Hamed:

The Amplituhedron

(minute 43:20) We can’t just keep making equivalences between ideas that were essentially handed to us from the early part of the 20th century. We have to find really new things!

Maybe I’ll just end with this. A slogan that many of you have heard many times is that space-time has gotta be emergent. But I think it’s very unlikely that *just* space-time is emergent. It seems very unlikely to me that quantum mechanics just going to sit there with space-time being emergent. I think space-time *and* quantum mechanics have to emerge hand-in-hand from some more primitive principles.

…researchers are tying decades-long oscillations
in the Gulf Stream and the rest of the
ocean conveyor to long-recognized fluctuations
in Atlantic sea-surface temperatures.
These fluctuations, in turn, seem to have
helped drive the recent revival of Atlantic hurricanes,
the drying of the Sahel in the 1970s
and ’80s, and the global warming of the past
few decades, among other climate trends.

…temperatures around the North
Atlantic had risen and fallen in a
roughly 60- to 80-year cycle over
the past few centuries. This climate
variability was dubbed the Atlantic
Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO).
Ocean observations suggested that
a weakening of the ocean conveyor could have
cooled the Atlantic region and even the entire
Northern Hemisphere in the 1950s and ’60s,
and a subsequent strengthening could have
helped warm it in the 1980s and ’90s.

…the conveyor has
been accelerating during the past 35 years—
not beginning to slow, as some signs had hinted
(Science, 16 April 2004, p. 371). That acceleration
could account for about 10% to 25% of
the global warming seen since the mid-1970s,
they calculate, meaning that rising
greenhouse gases haven’t been
warming the world quite as fast as
was thought.

The ocean conveyor “is an important
source of climate variability,” says meteorologist
James Hurrell of the National Center
for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.
“There’s increasing evidence of the
important role oceans have played in climate
change.” And there are growing signs that the
conveyor may well begin to slow on its own
within a decade or two, temporarily cooling
the Atlantic and possibly reversing many
recent climate effects.

Fan, you cite Marcott at al? Really?
So you do not agree with skeptical analysis of Marcott that attributed his hockey stick to a Yamal like sample size of one data point that caused it?
If you are holding Marcott up as the real truth, then there really is not anything a skeptic could hold up that would not also be truth as well.

Dr. Spencer points out that the “hard reality of observations” has falsified the earlier IPCC model predictions (i.e. the basis fir the “CAGW” premise, as outlined by IPCC in its AR4 report)..

This essay is well worth reading for anybody, pro or con the so-called “consensus”.

Closing lines:

We are now at the point in the age of global warming hysteria where the IPCC global warming theory has crashed into the hard reality of observations. A few of us are not that surprised, as we always distrusted the level of faith that climate modelers had in their understanding of the causes of climate change.

I continue to suspect that, in the coming years, scientists will increasingly realize that more CO2 in the atmosphere is, on the whole, good for life on Earth. Given that CO2 is necessary for life, and that nature continues to gobble up 50% of the CO2 we produce as fast as we can produce it, I won’t be that surprised when that paradigm shift occurs, either.

The reason for the discrepancy between model outputs and observations is glaringly obvious. The climate models are incorrectly structured because they are based on three irrational and false assumptions. First that CO2 is the main climate driver ,second that in calculating climate sensitivity the GHE due to water vapour should be added to that of CO2 as a feed back effect and third that the GHE of water vapour is always positive.As to the last point the feedbacks cannot be positive otherwise we wouldn’t be here to talk about it .
Temperature drives both CO2 and water vapour independently,. The whole CAGW – GHG scare is based on the obvious fallacy of putting the effect before the cause.As a simple (not exact) analogy controlling CO2 levels to control temperature is like trying to lower the temperature of an electric hot plate under a boiling pan of water by capturing and sequestering the steam coming off the top.A corollory to this idea is that the whole idea of a simple climate sensitivity to CO2 is nonsense and the sensitivity equation has no physical meaning unless you already know what the natural controls on energy inputs are already ie the extent of the natural variability.
Furthermore the modelling approach is inherently of no value for predicting future temperature with any calculable certainty because of the difficulty of specifying the initial conditions of a large number of variables with sufficient precision prior to multiple iterations. There is no way of knowing whether the outputs after the parameterisation of the multiple inputs merely hide compensating errors in the system as a whole.
The IPCC AR4 WG1 science section actually acknowledges this fact. Section IPCC AR4 WG1 8.6 deals with forcings, feedbacks and climate sensitivity. The conclusions are in section 8.6.4 which deals with the reliability of the projections.It concludes:
“Moreover it is not yet clear which tests are critical for constraining the future projections,consequently a set of model metrics that might be used to narrow the range of plausible climate change feedbacks and climate sensitivity has yet to be developed”
What could be clearer. The IPCC in 2007 said itself that we don’t even know what metrics to put into the models to test their reliability.- ie we don’t know what future temperatures will be and we can’t calculate the climate sensitivity to CO2.This also begs a further question of what mere assumptions went into the “plausible” models to be tested anyway.
These remarks in the AR4 WG1 section were completely ignored in the uncertainty estimates in the AR4 SPM. It appears that the IPCC will ignore these true statements in the AR5 SPM uncertainty estimates also.
In summary the projections of the IPCC – Met office models and all the impact studies which derive from them are based on specifically structurally flawed and inherently useless models.They deserve no place in any serious discussion of future climate trends and represent an enormous waste of time and money.As a basis for public policy their forecasts are grossly in error and therefore worse than useless.
For a completely different approach to forecasting based on recognizing quasi-cyclic, quasi repetitive patterns and a forecast of the timing and extent of the coming cooling see several posts at

Excellent explanation for why the next IPCC report shouldn’t have much value. You might add slightly more information about some of the technical areas and be ready to give it to journalists who call for comments.

Looks like the “CAGW premise” (as outlined by IPCC in its AR4 report) is headed the same way as the “phlogiston hypothesis” before it.

Only difference is that CAGW has become a multi-billion dollar big business, with the possibility of growing to a trillion dollar business if a direct or indirect global carbon tax could be implemented.

wise words from Lord Voldemort ” Here’s the danger of being so certain of what is going to happen with the climate- instead of simply observing and looking for things that might prove your ideas wrong– you display confirmation bias and only look for things that prove you right.”
Applies to all of us and wish I had written it first.
Pots and kettles spring to mind.
A keeper as they say.

Do you know how to make your site mobile friendly? My site looks
weird when browsing from my iphone4. I’m trying to find a theme or plugin
that might be able to correct this issue. If you have any recommendations, please share.
Many thanks!